D10s are superior but d6s are more prevalent. However, in order for d10s to become more popular and available, games have to use them.

@Kollider115

8 ай бұрын

I think its a self fulfilling cycle. 6s are used because they are used. If more games pushed into d10s or 12s, then more games would use them and there would be more of them

@flint9080

15 күн бұрын

I like the idea of D10s, I don't think there needs to be one dice to rule them all. In Warhammer 2nd edition, all dice variants were used, maybe except D20. For larger scale games, too many dice options becomes too complicated, but D10s allow for D100 which allows for 1% increments and the D10 for 10% increments. I think that's a pretty good sweet spot.

A decent topic for this series would be "How many tokens and markers should be on the table for a game."

@knoxminis1211

8 ай бұрын

Agreed. One of the reasons I never got involved in Star Wars Legion was because I already played Armada and Xwing, and the number of cards and tokens got really annoying and took up so much room. I also really love Adeptus Titanicus, but the cards used there is a little annoying, but I get that managing the resources of a titan is part of the game.

@WoodImp

8 ай бұрын

Sometimes a bit of a fault with Necromunda I feel, I don't mind the visual clutter, but I see it slowing a lot of opponents down in what already can be a slow game for beginners. While impractical, a lot of us have taken to printing off a list (7-9 model game typically) and annotate that as we go

This discussion is actually not too dissimilar from the number base discussion. We use base 10 but couldn't we use base 12 for efficiency? Since 12 is super divisible, you can have the same probabilities of a d2, d3, d4, d6 on a d12 and the flexibility of having 12 sides to hit balances between those probabilities for hyper tuning of the game.

I think 40k would benefit a lot from switching to a d10 or D12 system, just by doing that you could add so much more balance and flavour to individual units and factions.

@smugron1101

8 ай бұрын

I absolutely agree.

@edwardspruill8788

8 ай бұрын

I agree. It's not going to happen, because it makes too much sense. But, I do agree.

@gabrielmarquez4029

8 ай бұрын

Agreed, D12 could add so much variation to units and easily represent units. For example a space marine could hit of 5+ and a veteran on a 4+.

@godsvendetta117

8 ай бұрын

I concur

@jessethemage8988

8 ай бұрын

i have been working on a system like that for 40k, its playable and i have videos about it (outdated the game is even more streamlined now and more fun). if you are interested you can play it!

The first video game with "Freelook" would be "Marathon" developed by Bungie and released for Mac in 1994. Also id software had adopted the use of freelook with the Quake engine and game. Lastly, Half-life used a very modified Quake 2 engine, which was already using Freelook.

Yes, you got this exactly right. Larger die sizes give you more granularity in modifiers. There are no "Best" dice as it comes down to how you use them. Do you want the percentages easily calculated or do you want them hidden? Obviously D10s are great for easy calculations. When talking about what dice to use, you have to figure out how fast you want to solve any 1 situation. Does 1 roll = 1 shot? Does 1 roll = shot and armor pen? Does 1 roll = a whole unit shooting PLUS morale effects? That is very important to the speed of your game and its scale. The GW system is a 3x (D6) system. And I agree with you 1000%!!! The number of rolls needed to solve a single action in a GW game is, frankly, obnoxious. I have seen a single attack take 6 rolls and end with absolutely nothing happening. That is just gratuitous re-rolling of dice. Re-rolls in games, deflate the results of the dice. Rerolls should be very few and far between. My preferred resolution speed is 2 rolls to decide any effect. That can be 2 by an attacker or 1 from attacker and 1 from defender. But for 99% of the the game 2 rolls should give an outcome against any unit. I also, absolutely dislike custom dice. It makes it incredibly hard to determine the statistics especially when you have dice with multiple symbols per side. Yuck! They are very popular with certain designers because (1) you can copyright your 'custom' dice set and their mechanic. (2) you can then sell dice sets that only you can produce. I feel its scummy.

@jtjames79

8 ай бұрын

I prefer D6s because they are cubes. Very stable so you can push them around without them rolling around. At least for wargames.

I would suggest reversing the dice success values to make the math quicker. For example, changing a 4+ to a stat of 7. Most people want to know "how likely am I to hit." Rolling 7 or lower instantly translates to a 70% chance for most people. Instead of having to either take a 4 then subtract 1, then reveres otherwise I've calculated the failure rate. (Obviously some people can take a 4+ and pull 70% by doing the math of I have 7 chances that succeeded, so 70%, but that's generally less common unless you've played these games a lot.) PLUS this system means the stats make more intuitive sense. Higher number = better. Instead of this odd switch back-in-forth in 40K unit cards, where some numbers you want big and some numbers you want small depending on if they have a "+". That's weird. And getting bonuses to hit can be denoted with "+1 to hit", instead of you gain one better ballistic skill which translates into a negative number on that stat (So 4+ becomes 3+). Couple of quick examples: Infinity works this way, with the higher number being better. Then they use that intuitive value comparisons humans make to add head to head rolls where higher number wins. Xcom gives you chance to hit, not chance to fail etc. but I think you get the idea I think this change make things more accessible and enjoyable for a wider range of people outside of the wargamming space.

@IronChe

8 ай бұрын

Thumbs up, great idea!

@dagroth123

8 ай бұрын

another way, that i've used, the 4+ as 7 is to make the target number 1->7. a 7- if you will. now mind you, my system includes crits 3.5style so, having a fixed "1 is critical" is more helpful to me than the modular "special effect" of a war-game.

It depends on the game. 40k would massively benefit from a D10 system because of their extremely large pool of different factions with varying strengths and weaknesses. A D6 system cannot cover that. Proof ? 9th edition.

@jessethemage8988

8 ай бұрын

if you are interested in a 40k game with d10 dice, i have created (been creating) it. you can play it if you want!

The first commercial FPS to allow players to use the mouse to freely look around a 3D environment was Marathon, released by Bungie in 1994.

@Patrickf5087

8 ай бұрын

You mean designed around doom could use the mouse in the orginal game

@HaikuPanda

8 ай бұрын

Marathon was bound with arrow keys. Not WASD. Maybe half credit half life.

I personally like the D10 system Matthew. And agree about rerolls. Maybe add a wild dice mechanic. Like for instance if you pull a boost out of the bag you can use 1 wild dice to your attacks (basically get 1 extra dice to roll with your attack dice that turn you get a boost.) instead of tons of rerolls. Also love the token turn mechanic.

I like the philosophy you touch on (but didn't outright state) around 14:40, using systems that people are already familiar with. This means it's easy to pickup, learn and teach. Which is a huge barrier to getting people into miniature games.

Thank you for recognizing star wars legions superiority concerning movement. It saves so much time and lets you actually focus on the game. Also, i like your reasoning behind using d10s. No rerolls and simplicity make gaming quicker and more enjoyable so Im all for it

It is interesting when you get into usefulness of a dice. I like to think of about how many times I can divide a dice's number of sides. The more variations, the more useful. I really like 12 sided dice, you can divide by 2, 3, 4, and 6, which means you half a coin (heads or tail), a 3sided dice, a 4 sided dice, or a 6 sided dice. I wish there were more systems that used these.

@gavinbeaton4112

8 ай бұрын

I agree, 12 sided dice are really good for the reason you've stated

@paulkingtiger

8 ай бұрын

The same reason 12 inches to a foot is really useful, easy fractional calculations. I feel like percentages are more popular these days though for game mechanics. There's always a d20 is you want 5% increments.

@albdamned577

8 ай бұрын

@@paulkingtiger those Babylonians really did have a good ability to choose a base numbers for a system. Way better at math than those Romans and Mongolians!

Hey Matt! Very excited about Ravaged Star. Congratulations! I would love to hear more about the setting and conflict.When it comes to dice and game mechanics, I recently played and read a dice-less miniatures game: One-Hour Skirmish Wargames. If you get the chance, take a look at it. The book explains some of the math behind the game mechanics and it's very interesting. Also, the turn/phase system is quite different from what I've seen and very engaging. Looking forward to watching the next video in the series!

I love rolling buckets of dice!!! Really like D6 but I also think D10 are great! I was planning on using D10s in my own game project. I also don't really like proprietary dice, they get weird even though they lend themselves for unique things.

Love these videos, I've spent a lot of research on both of the topics so far and have come to similar conclusions. It's tricky because inside a particular game's community it will be full of people stating that x rule that game isn't using is 'objectively better', but as you've said it's much more about the cohesive whole and how each mechanic slots into that. My biggest suggestion is to really have a theme and gameplay experience goals very heavily nailed down so that with every one of these questions you can really push into those and give them an extra twist that makes it unique and come together. So with dice, it's really about complexity and granularity as you've stated, bigger dice let's you create a bigger range of results, either allowing for tables with different effects/different dice faces or a wider range between extremes, meaning something with low accuracy has a much harder time hitting something with high dodge the bigger that range gets. It's a really tough line to walk with wargames. The more you lean into complexity and granularity the more you risk making the game more time consuming and difficult to learn, and therefore the less models the game is enjoyable to have on the table. It's why Warhammer pushes to use d6's and limited bonuses and rerolls, these generally are quick to read and perform and they can push the game to have bigger armies and make more money from models. I personally think d10 is my preferred default as it has much more granularity than d6 and most people can easily understand and calculate within the 1-10 number range. I think the biggest fault is that d6's are just more fun to roll and satisfying to just have pips to read, but it's often worth it to free up the range of bonuses and have the more powerful stats feel much more powerful than the low end. D8's and d12's aren't bad options either and are nice to roll, but d20's I think go too far in their range.

Big fan of SWL here. Just got back into 40k and what you said about rerolls resonated deeply.

I personally love Wasteland Warfare and Skyrim dice systems, the rolling of the dice itself is way more satisfying than any other game I've played. It absolutely would not work for a larger game scale though, but it's perfect for skirmish scale.

Brought back a fun memory. 4th edition of Warhammer Fantasy. They had this interesting Jem, called Black Gem of Gnar. Where if your character suffered a wound, it/they can be rebounded. Well Azhad, and Karl were battling it out, and both our characters had one wound left with the Gnar. And the wound kept bouncing back and forth. We were so sweating, and entertained. But alas, Azhag fell. We had to take a break, enjoyed a drink, and laughed. And the rules were so much simpler then. Ok, also known as Hero hammer. But was a blast.the rules were so much easier that we ended up playing 10,000 pt games. But we kept the blind deployment from 3rd. The shock was so cool when lifting the blind. Good times.

I really like percentile dice for the granularity and transparency. It also has a lot of cool dice tricks like doubles (33), adding them together (34 becomes 7) and flipping the results (93 becomes 39). Love this series.

An interesting concept for dice I've been thinking about is you always succeed on a 6+ but the dice changes depending on the quality of the unit. For example, a unit that's bad a shooting will roll D6s while a unit that's good at shooting will roll D12s. Changing the dice instead of changing the value required.

@leesweeney8879

8 ай бұрын

Tomorrow's War does this as well as others, plays quite well.

@edevans5991

8 ай бұрын

I think Force on Force does this.

@EntropicEcho

8 ай бұрын

Yeah, Tomorrow's War is like that. The problem is that the difference in qualities between dice become really big. In TW the quality of the troops or strength of the weapon is reflected in the dice used. Once you attack with the bigger dice, rolling defence on a lower dice becomes almost meaningless. It's a choice, but not one that made a fun game for me personally.

@johnjeneki3758

8 ай бұрын

Stargrunt II did it in a way that looked really wrong at first, until I sat down and did the math on the statistics, and found it to be perfectly reasonable. As a more modern example, Polyversal uses multiple die types to good effect.

@m__y-t-s

8 ай бұрын

I want to say D&D Conquest of Nerath (fantasy Risk with a bit more crunch?) did this, using 4+ and units up and down the polyhedral scale. Decent game, that.

Mantic's d8 with exploding 8s on Firefight/Killzone makes the game sooooo much more variable and fun. There is crazy excitement when you throw a d8, get an 8, then another, then another and then some little unit suddenly became the hero of the game. That said, it is sooo hard to source them, and there aren't Chessex boxes of just d8/10/12 with a million color variations.

@calebhargus

8 ай бұрын

I dont think that exists in Firefight but does in Deadzone if thats what you meant.

Hey! long time viewer, best tabletop-channel. Love your camera-style, gets me a good understanding of the match and what's going on, also wholesome people. I really like your train of thought on D10s giving better granularity and being able to modify them more in a stackable way, I'm also onboard on rerolls, I like rerolls but they should be rare and mostly for things like "roll on this table to see effect", not so much anything like vehicles exploding or a good weapon hitting on a 2+. In my experience (small as it is, WHFB 7-9, AoS 1-3, 40k 5-9), in the current GW lineup the thing I really really really like about 40k and miss when I play AoS is Strength vs Toughness and also Damage not spilling over. In 40k a weapon can be a really powerful anti heavy killer but useless agains hordes. In AoS a weapon is most often either good or bad. I'm all into artillery and such where this really shows, good examples are the Bonereaper Catapult and the new Cities of Sigmar Cannon. Both have different firing modes which in 40k would be really useful but in AoS there's really not much to "trade". It's all about attacks and damage. 20 attacks with 1 damage or 1 attack with 20 damage doesn't really matter, yes there's the reliability ofc but statistically it's the same, just go with the one that has a better chance to hit. The thing you can trade is potential damage for rend/ap which never feels really interesting or useful to me. With D10s and more granularity it could be better I guess.

Fan of d10s in general. But nothing beats the d12!

@stobiusshroden

8 ай бұрын

2D8 -D4 !! (thats 1 to 15)

@peppermintshore

8 ай бұрын

100% agree. D12 is the perfect dice.

@GlassHalfDead

8 ай бұрын

Why the D12 specifically?

@stobiusshroden

8 ай бұрын

has lego levels of pain under foot@@GlassHalfDead

@Uncle_Buck

8 ай бұрын

​@@GlassHalfDeadIt's the most unloved die.

For my Dev project, I chose D6s as the main for the system due to the wider availability of D6 and their general lower cost: as it's a F2P Tabletop ruleset being able to go to any dollar store or Walmart here in America and pick up a set of D6 for 1-3$, reducing cost for the end user to start playing. Love these videos so much!!! Keep up the dev work!

@dragonridgestudios9323

8 ай бұрын

Touching on Rerolls, running heavy reroll options is somewhat tedious, and while I haven't eliminated them completely, they are not nearly as prevalent or as available as they are in 40K or, the closer analog for my game, Killteam

I am a huge fan of these videos and am very excited for this game! Yes, SW Legion movenent is awesome, also enjoy drawing the cards for activations

I reckon you have made a good choice going with D10’s. I am a roleplayer at heart, so I use lots of different dice in rpg games. I love the ‘one dice system’ of wargames as it just makes it easier and faster. D10’s over D6’s have a cleaner percentile gap, so theoretically, is easier to work out how strong/weak any given model is. I’d keep the D10 system, for a faster and easier experience when playing

I've played around a lot with using d10s. As you point out d10 gives you some nice granularity. Some ideas to think about. 1. Try roll UNDER If you do a d10 roll under instead of a roll over then the number you need to roll is the percentage chance (divided by 10). This is highly intuitive. 2. The number you roll can have an impact on what happened. You can also use different rolls for different effects because each number has a 10% chance. So if you roll a 1 that might be an extra success, if you roll 10 that might be a bad failure, if you roll equal to the number you needed that might be a complication. If it was d6 these things would be happening a little too often but on a d10 it's infrequent enough to be interesting but frequent enough to be a real factor. You can also create a range for a GREAT attack. So one unit might need to roll a 5 or less to succeed and have a great attack on 1. Another unit might need to roll an 8 or less to succeed and have a great attack on 1-2. 3. Roll 2 dice and take the best or worst result. You can also roll an extra d10 for some attacks and take the best or worst roll depending on what the attack is. That will increase or decrease your chance by around 23%. This can be useful for things like shooting at someone with cover (worst of two), attacking from above (best of two) etc. if you're looking for a simple way to deal with those types of combat situations.

I like the idea of D10's for the granularity as you discussed. One thing that may be slightly offsetting is most gamers have several sets of D6's around, but rarer to see D10's. I'd recommend quality D10's in the box sets vice standard quality fair. I.E. Make them seem themed to the factions included, vice a color swap. Ravaged Star already has such a cool presentation, having it match to the point of what you're rolling on the tabletop is great. Thanks for your thoughtfulness with the game's development, and wisdom to solicit input from the community on this! Can't wait to play the game!

As an old L5R 4e player, Im all in on d10s. Really excited to see you guys using them. d6s really hurt 40k when it comes to armor saves. Power armor and terminator saves are the same as heavy tanks and guns with 1-2 AP meant for dealing with Medium to heavy infantry could easily overwhelm heavy armor on mass. It leaves a lot more room for balancing out the difference in units as well. A friend and I started used Alternating activations in 9th, going phase by phase. I move a unit, them him, then me, then him... until were out of units. We did the same with psychic, then combined shooting and charging (so that gunlines wouldn't just dominate melee armies) A unit was aloud to shoot then charge (if eligible) as part of the same phase, then we did all the fighting, then moral. All going one at a time. Made the games a lot more dynamic. Units that wanted to shoot had to at least somewhat expose themselves to do so. Both armies were moving at the same time so melee units were both rushing forward turn one, but units that didn't want to get tied up in melee were able to move reactively and retreat. We would see what the other player was gunning for and move block or pull away and suddenly it all became so much more tactical. Then the shooting started and it became this real puzzle of picking which unit to activate first. Shooting with your big tank in the back means giving him the chance to charge first with the melee threats you both rushed into charge range. Charging first with your own melee units means you might not be able to soften them up with your big guns. Meanwhile, if your opponent did just fire a really scary glass cannon at you, ..you could shoot it next, but its already shot this turn, you might be better off targeting a unit that hasn't fired yet to mitigate further damage now. First turn advantage was cut down drastically, winning on one flank often meant taking losses on anther, games were more engaging without 30+ minutes between turns. It does take a surprising amount of patches as a lot of strats become suddenly worthless without re-writing (rapid ingress in 10th for example), and it skews the points in favor of durability by a noticeable amount. Its definitely better, but it does need balancing. If you guys could find a way to blend d10s and alternating activations and then put in the leg work of balancing it all, I would absolutely evangelize for such a system.

A big bucket of basic D6s gives you a binomial curve the closest to the standard normal distribution, so that is what is best in my view. I used to play eurogames and Magic: the Gathering with a guy whose day job was this stuff at the time, and his view was that the two ways he would like to see dice used in a game would be in the hundreds, or not at all.

An interesting dice system was Warmachine. Adding multiple dice together gives a result weighted towards the center value. However it's not really viable for a system with lots of units and models that act together. At least in my opinion.

I love how OPR handles Rerolls. Cause it's never enough to slow the game down but it ALSO allows for tactical flow and ebb..

I think it's a matter of volume. If one unit's attack action represents 20-30+ swings/shots (if they are to be resolved individually), it is much more convenient to use 6-sided dice. Not only are they more prevalent in various sizes and cheaper to buy, but their geometry facilitates rolling many at a time. If the game allows for more granularity/grit, 10-sided dice do provide many benefits such as you have discussed. Frostgrave comes to mind as a warband game with ~11 models per team, where each model moves and acts individually. Each attack or action is resolved with a D20 roll, and there are many modifiers.

So far my favorite dice system is that of Pulp Alley, which uses D6s up to D12s. The game has no modifiers to roll values; instead, it always uses a target number of four for any dice rolled and counts successes. The strength of a unit's ability to shoot or brawl is determined by its die type and the number of dice rolled for that die type (e.g. 3d8). Furthermore, defenders always have the option to fight back or dodge, which introduces a mechanic of success canceling by the attacker or defender depending on the defender's choice of fighting or dodging. Kill Team's close combat is the closest thing that resembles it but in Pulp Alley it is used for both shooting and close combat. It's activation system is also pretty unique (this belongs to your other video but I'll just post it here) where one player is the "Director" and decides which player gets to activate next. Other players can become the director by capturing objectives or "clearly" winning combats ("clearly" meaning suffering no hits during the exchange) and directorship can exchange several times per round. Overall, the game has unique sets of mechanics that I really haven't seen from other wargames.

One thought that came up based on when you were talking about "I want the rules to allow for narrative play." IE I want to allow for randomness. I think some randomness is great, however too much may feel nihilistic, as in nothing much matters because everything is so chaotic. Players are going to be split on this point, some are going to want more randomness, and some are going to want less. Hearthstone went down the path of more randomness if you are looking for a case study. You may consider diverging into competitive play versus casual play where the randomness is turned up on the casual play side. If you try to have a system that tries to please both of these camps, you may fail and end up pleasing neither.

I feel that the dice with more numerous faces minimizes the need for multiple rolls to determine the effects of a single action. But for war games I would advise stealing from the CMON game War of Kings. Where each attack is decided by a single roll of a D10. The die roll is matched against the defender's chart to show how the reacted to being struck (dodging; blocking; deflection; or allowing their armour to sock the hit). But each attacker also had an ability to counter some of those defenses, such as an attacker with a great hammer ignoring the defender's attempts to rely on their armour.

A friend wrote a set of rules that had a cool, I thought anyway, mechanic. He called it a 'Risk-Die' The standard game used D6, but on things where you wanted to really push your luck, wanting that ability to not just hurt the opponent, but destroy them, you could opt in for a D10. The rewards were there, a top of the dice, 9-10 you could do way more damage(similar to Exploding 6s that other games use) but the risk was, on a 1-2 YOU could be hurt(exploding gun, malfunctions) those problems weren't available on either end using D6. Honestly, I'm just a D10 fan, but it was interesting.

In my mind D12's are probably the highest dice i'd use for rollability/readability (although they *roll* way too well for the rogue dice scenario), plus they're just neat and alas seldom used. D20's are fine for RPGs but are slow to read and even worse in multiples, and are essentially abridged D100s. D10's are by far the easiest for mathing out things. I think if the hit/wound save/save thing wasn't so embedded in warhammer they'd consider changing it, but it's somewhat "iconic" of the system. For some reason if you mathed it out and say resolved the entire chain in a D12, i'd guess it would *feel* worse. Albeit waaay faster. Feels like the sweet spot is 1 attack, then 1 oppose. Of course real game systems standardise on D7's.

@dustrockblues7567

8 ай бұрын

GW game rules feel very outdated to me. They need to get over their "iconic" systems and modernize imo.

D6 (or whole load of them) are easier to read faster than a bunch of D10s. I don't really mind re-rolls as long as they don't come up too often and aren't too powerful. I used to like re-rolling 1s as a mechanic, for example. I might be more jaded with rolling a lot of dice if I gamed more often (for example-If I played games for a living on youtube). As it is I only play one or two games per month on average so to me rolling dice is part of the fun rather than being a chore. To my mind, D10s are one of those things that makes sense on paper but doesn't work as well as people think it will in practice. Like metric based time or grid layouts for cities (yes, you can't get lost but you also can't get anywhere fast-In a car or on foot as there are roads or traffic lights every few moments). I agree about special dice. I also don't like games that come with mountains of counters and what have you. One of the things that stops me from wanting to pick up Star Wars Legion is the mountain of cards and counters you need to play.

The limitations on a die come from how the game uses dice to determine outcomes, mot always because of the number of faces. One of the mechanics i like least is a static x+ for a characteristic, because that's where the limitation really comes in. But there are plenty of ways to use dice without needing a lot of sides to generate differences

Game dev here. Totally agree with your opinion on wierd dices. is it good? is it bad? no idea.. D6 and D10 are easy to read and understand numbers. Instead of special dices with multiple outputs which you don't understand directy or have to go to a chart to understand what happens next.

Bravo, these have been great. Many discussions of different systems over the years and I'm afraid none will ever be perfect. I agree about special dice never liked any of them. I liked what I've seen of Ravaged Star. I would really like the the token initiative if it didn't give me the double turn vibes. I really like the idea just not the possibilities. Keep up the great work.

So I think youre absolutely right that the Warhammer rerolls are a little fun crushing. But there's also something specific they do that you need to think about, is that they add consistency to "elite" units. If you aren't adding rerolls, then modifiers become way more important for some added consistency. I do like your answer that you aren't planning on capping modifiers.

I just stumbled upon this video although I've been a fan of MWG for years. ( I still remember feeling vindicated after watching your video on Finecast lol) I just wanted to say THANK YOU and please keep the discussion going! I've been writing my own wargame for a few years now and I'm at the stage where I need to raise money to get models made. I've had to do this on my own and its been a slog. Hearing your insights would be a big help. Especially if you can share anything about how to copyright to protect your game and dealing with other IP's. Mainly how to possibly acquire the rights to use someone else's and how to protect your own. Overall, any insights you have would be helpful. I look forward to the next video!!

A topic which is completely outside the scope of this discussion, but I want to send it your way regardless: Vehicles and tanks. Would you want them to work like they do in modern 40k? Basicly just a large healthbar to wittle down? Or armorvalues where outflanking the tank actually is rewarding? What about damage? Personally I would prefer the realistic variant of components being destroyed (tracks damaged, crewmen killed, turret traverse stuck). I’d love to hear a discussion about this!

Maybe it's because I'm new to dice rolling games, but I enjoy the roller coaster ride of ups and downs when rerolls are involved. But I have to agree with rerolls on large batches of dice. If it's hinging on one or two dice being rerolled, I do like that.

Great work so far! D10 are a good solution. Got my hands on the whole bundle of the Veil Touched. They are awesome models! I'm so excited to get the Gorkogs and Immari and !RULES!. In my opinion, you are on the right way. Keep it simple! Watched the testgames, it was so much fun. I'm tired of 40k. Ravaged Star is like fresh air. Best wishes and greetings from Germany!

I have to say I hate almost all rerolls. I get the point of them, but, as you mentioned, it takes away from the emotional attachment to the rolls and high tension moments. And it takes more time. As for the die types, I think the d6 are more ubiquitous and so better for most games to use, though the larger die does add more granularity.

I think you should look into 2nd ed 40k. D6 was the standard dice, but D4, 8,10,20 was used for a few things, mainly weapon penetration values

The point about granularity is exactly right and what I dislike about d6. I read one of the original Warhammer designers (maybe Rick Priestly) write that d6s were selected because of their accessibility, which was a big selling feature when games didn't come with dice, there were fewer game stores globally, and no internet.

Hi Matt, really excited for ravaged star and will be pledging, following the initial release will there be UK/EU distributors or will we be buying from the states?

One thing not really discussed about special dice is it can open up easier fast rolling of the same dice size. For example with Legion, if the game just used standard D8s you would have to go, “these two hit on a 3+, these three one a 5+, and this one on a 7+”, etc. rather than needing to remember that or roll separately you just roll everything and count the symbols. I think it works especially well when you use the same symbols across the dice and only have a couple different symbols so it doesn’t get cluttered, for example legion has 4. hit, surge, crit and blanks. Any more and it starts to get confusing quickly. Unique symbols also allow for integrated modifiers to the die roll, such as some units surges count as hits (essentially a +1 to hit), though it does restrict what modifiers you can use and the ability to stack them. All in all, just further points that different systems offer different options and drawbacks. Pros and cons all to be weight by the designer to pick what best fits their particular goal. For example you mention not wanting rerolls in ravaged start to allow for more dice variance, so you get those crazy dice swings. That is a fantastic goal (in my mind) for a game that aims to be a bit more casual and fun. I’m my mind, more “dicey” == less strategic. It’s a sliding scale every game has to pick a point on. They all have their place and appeal. For example I love Blood Bowl, but I think it’s incredibly dicey. It’s part of the charm and appeal. But that doesn’t fit for other games. Like when I play 40K, Legion, or Armada I want less swingy dice. I prefer it to be much more on the deterministic side, but with an option for variance. That’s what I personally find the most enjoyable.

@m__y-t-s

8 ай бұрын

The trick is to have multiple colours of dice. Reds hit on 4, blues hit on 6, and so on, arranged to taste.

The trade-off is in readability which drops as the number of dice you need to roll increases. D6s are language agnostic and very easy to pattern match in a large group. Higher sided dice trade readability for granularity and work better with smaller sets of rolls.

I always found the Dropzone game system did a very good job of having granularity with their dice without resorting to custom dice or going away from the D6. They simply removed the Armor save roll in most situations, combining it with a larger to wound table which made resolving attacks a lot easier. To be fair they aren't throwing around buckets of dice like 40k outside of infantry combats but it does smooth out alot of the normal gameplay. They even managed to add in criticals and modifiers into that system without complicating its simplicity.

I like the system in Bushido, D6, you have a sett number of dice, you pick how many you will use to attack and defend in secret. Your opponent dose the same, and you both roll att the same time defense successes nullifies attacks of the opponent, so both players dose damage att the same time. but it is a smal model count game focus on duels

With 40k having a success variable of only 3-5 usually really removes the dice aspect. Not percentile-wise, number variable wise. Off topic I LOVE that you have range bands. Agree on the rerolls.

One other unique characteristic of D10s: they double as a pointing arrow when a random direction is needed (scattering explosion, confusion, etc). Someone recently made a case to me for D12s: "they are the coolest looking dice". And I have to admit, I couldn't deny that argument. lol On the subject of picture dice, I lump all unique play materials material together (such as special measuring sticks instead of giving players a range in cm or inchs). It's a big turnoff when I need to buy stuff like that for just one game, not to mention that a manufacturing defect can cause huge confusion between players with different pieces. A few real world examples of this happening: a change in plastic warping a measuring stick, and a special die misprint leading to a game's hit rate being different than intended.

Id love to know your opinion on the prefered scale of a minature war game ie 28mm (40k) vs 15mm (flames of war)? What was the reason you chose 32mm, was this purely economical due to MWG existing terrain or another reason? Thanks Pollock

@cameronpollock2264

8 ай бұрын

Yes your correct, assumed incorrectly it was the old 40k scale @@kyleg5950

@leesweeney8879

8 ай бұрын

I would like 15mm foot to eye, as terrain is so much easier to store. I play 6mm SciFi so I can have more of a combined arms forces. 32mm is all the rage, so I play it as well but 15mm I think would be best for above Skirmish games. But the painters all claim at 25 years old they can not see to paint 15mm figs.

Really enjoying these videos, rules design is fascinating and there are so many things to consider. As for the type of dice, I tend to prefer the shape of a D12 over things like D8's and D10's as I feel the shape is more... balanced? It's probably psychological.

@Gnal00

8 ай бұрын

I will say, I think for rough calculations, its probably easier to think through as a D10...

Just a question about the founding, is a rules and components only kit will be available ? So we can play the game with our gw armies !

As an aspiring game developer - I like games that combine various types of dice - particularly for different actions or even weapons (one great example is Space Weirdos)

12:28 A Champion player named Tresh won with WASD+Mouse in Quake. Everyone I know switched to WASD after that. Half-Life was just the first main-stream game that had it as default.

The benefit of a d10 system is newer wargamers can recognize the impacts of modifiers quicker. Not that other dice are not inviting, but it just helps get newer games over the initial hurdle of investing in a game.

WRT custom dice, these have a couple of advantages that you didn't mention 1) they allow you to get a weighted probability distribution onto a single dice (this cuts out the step where you have to add up the numbers on multiple dice). 2) they allow flexibility with the numeric system you use for stats and 3) The addition of symbols allows for narrative possibilities beyond succeed or fail and give you access to some of the advantages that cards or tokens have over dice. For example you suceed in boosting the ship but a symbol came up that indicates that now you are running low on fuel. The custom dice is speeding up the amount of time it takes to model a more complex proceedure. I would be curious if there is a stronger preference for d10s in countries that use the metric system.

I think that another thing to consider here is how much the modifiers are felt in-game. For example a +1 modifier on a single d20 roll is basically non-noticeable (because with 95% probability the roll fails/succeeds regardless of the modifier). Imo this is also a really important thing to consider when it comes to what type of dice you use, how many of them you roll at a time, and what kind of modifiers your system uses on those rolls. I think all these things should come together s.t. the effect of the modifiers are really felt while playing. Perhaps something to consider.

Don't underestimate the D6 😉 On a D6 you can have a 1:1:1 distribution of chances: 1-2 = A, 3-4 = B, 5-6 = C. Add a +1 Modifier and BOOM the distribution shifts to 1:2:3 -> 1 = A, 2-3 = B, 4-6 = C. Something, a D10 cannot deliver. Also, do you happen to know "Gangs Of Rome"? They are using dice with Roman numerals. So you get the numerals I, II, III, IV, V, VI. For a reason. When you need a movment into a random direction, you roll such a D6. On I-III, no movement takes place, but on IV, V or VI a unit moves that many inches into the direction the V is pointing. Somthing, a D10 cannot deliver either. To throw in - again - one of my games: Whack & Slaughter uses D6, as a D6 comes with pips. And those pips are used as pips on a character sheet: by colouring them in, you distribute the power of your Hero across the faces of a die. Nope, once again the D10 is not capable of that, too. I'd prefer a D6 over a D10 any time.

I agree with using D10s. My biggest complaint about Bolt Action is how just a few modifiers are enough to push you to needing 7s on a D6. I remember hearing that the designers wanted to use something besides d6s but the higher ups thought D6s were just more familiar to beginners. So that is why you roll the dice so many times. Rerolls in GW games are a pet peeve of mine. Sometimes you have to do a lot of dice just to pull a few gretchen off the board. At least the got rid of the whole "Might as well overcharge these plasma rifles since I'm rerolling 1s." That really made me mad.

Love the simple view of D10, aligns well with metric. Thoughts on use of some sets of D10s such a percentiles for an amries 'thing'. And I also dislike games that make you buy and use their special dice. Thoughts on always having free army rules for ease of entry to the game? Excited for buy some, and more excited for upcoming armies.

One thing I like about using D6 is that they feel good in the hand when shaking and rolling. Granularity is great with D10, but there's something very cut and dry with how brutal a D6 result can be. Better for larger wargames where a simple live or die result is needed.

so i have been watching this is not a test, and i really like damage being applied at the end of the round. that way you can us all your stuff.

@andrewbakescakes9684

8 ай бұрын

I would like something like this too. If not the end of round, then end of phase. Using all toys are reducing feels bad alpha strike is a good way to go.

I personally like games with multiple dice like mantic uses so it's way easier to show scope of power with ad6 versus like a giant robot using d10

Thanks for those Developper's diary. Very Interesting. I think I like D10 more now, with less throws. I would really like 40k to have alternate units system and 1 Attack throw then 1 Defense Throw with less reroll (just the Stratagem maybe) With time and version, there is too many rolls : To Hit, Reroll, To Wound, Reroll, Damage, sometimes reroll, Saves, sometimes Reroll, Feel No Pain, sometime Rerolls... That's way too much and a bit annoying. I don't mind having big number of dices but those slow downs too much the game. I'm thinking about merging Hit and Wound as Houses rules but that's hard (and need agreement from my opponent) Good Work and Good Luck for your campaign !

On Dice: My personal feeling is that nothing larger than a D12 should be used for miniature wargames. Frostgrave is one of those games that exemplifies this. The game has low modifiers, but the D20 has so much swing, that you are basically cleaving through people, or doing no damage. I also feel this is a reflection of not having the defender's die roll matter unless it is above the attacker's. Instead of providing some mitigation, as long as you roll high enough, and beat your opponent by 1, you are seriously wounding or removing them. Infinity is a similar vein, except they do use the opponent's roll to mean something for dodging multiple shots. FMA Skirmish (FMASk,) developed by Ground Zero Games for their 25mm Star Grunt game has a good mechanic which based the die type used by a unit or model to their quality. Something like an untrained civilian would use a D4, while a battle hardened veteran would use a D12. This meant that some things could just not be accomplished by those who did not have a high enough quality to them. However, it was amazingly fun, and a friend of mine skinned it to some home brew skirmish games. On Re-Rolls: I also despise how prevalent re-rolling dice has become. I feel it is unnecessary in extremely large salvos, and grinds away time. Games like 40K were much simpler before the aura abilities and en masse re-rolls. It makes rolling mean less. Of course there were certain rules that allowed for it before 8th edition popped up, but they were very few. Keep it simple.

Where did you get that shirt from? I live it!

I do appreciate the d10 system from things like This is not a Test and Reality's Edge (yes I'm aware they are the same game system as the author is the same) as it does definitely allow for more flexibility to utilise and stack modifiers and to the extent allow a bit more variety in the rolling calculations (d6 rolls are 16.6667% between values as d10 is 10% between values)

As a player of Mantic's Armada. D10's work very well.

I personally love the feeling of rolling an actual handful of dice, to the point that I don't mind D6s being the increasing standard. However, rerolling and losing out on granularity is something I find bothersome as well. I do like the idea of using D10s to add that granularity, and potentially it would speed up the rolling process because that granularity would reduce the need to count up and roll another set of "successful" dice. Having the "toughness" be a modifier to the actual hit roll would be much simpler and faster for me. For what it's worth, though, I feel a D12 would be more comfortable to roll in handfuls rather than D10s. They're less spikey.

My biggest point against special dice is availability and customization. Like in TTRPGs dice can be part of the story. So you have your special army that you painted in a special way and then you go online and you find just the perfect dice that acompany them. With special game dice that option is off the table because you can pretty much only play the game with those dice. It alos beggs the question of what happens when the game maybe goes out of print somewhen and you might still be able to buy some miniatures but you just cannot get the dice anymore. In terms of mechanics special dice have a lot to offer though imo. Looking at Genesys RPG, the way the dice are able to tell a story. I like that a lot better than a simple d20. And in wargames like Dystopian Wars the multiuse of the critical "wound"/ damage dice is pretty neat.

Nothing wrong with the KISS method, 'Keep It Stupid Simple'/ 'Simple'Stupid'. Not saying the basic roll to hit, and defense is stupid or simple, but it is refreshing not having to roll and reroll and reroll and potentially reroll again for a single activation of a unit.

I would like to know how the mechanics of a game like the FFG starwars spaceship games work in a mass battle game Chaos chosen would move last but fight first Five squigs could be given a new order every turn but 30 would be almost uncontrollable and have to have orders given 3 turns in advance

I've been working on a table top wargame for a really long time, iterating over and over, but i also use D10s, my sysems is rolling under a target number. I think D10s give a lot more crunch and detail, and i dig it.

Watching some of the playtest videos previously, d10 is great and as you said has the granularity. To me d6's only work with small scale or when there is a chart to reference like the old Warhammer editions. I think the reroll could be incorporated but as a single dice roll associated to the unit. This could be a unique ability or tied with the Boost, but since they only roll to attack or if they are defending, a single dice roll feels good and has that "I might save this for defense" feel or "All out attack" feel. Again, it's rerolling a single dice for the unit, so it's player agency where that should go and if it gets used, hopefully helping with the critical moments, but still not reliable. I look forward to playing Ravaged Star, it looks fantastic.

The "Bespoke" dice that many games are using now make sense for board games (Heroquest for example) but I'm not a fan of them in more complete miniatures games. D6s were fine in earlier editions of Warhammer/40k, but that was before we were rolling buckets of dice and had all of the rerolls and "feel no pain" sort of rules. Anything more that 3 rounds of rolling more than 20 dice is just a pain. I think the folks at Warlord got it right. the d6 still works well with Bolt Action and other historical games because the troops are very similar and there are fewer special rules. But with Beyond the Gate of Antares they used d10s to get more granular, allow for the differences in different species, and avoided the need for an armor save roll.

Off topic, but there was mention of Elder Scrolls and Fallout: Wasteland Warfare - both games with solid solo modes! Would you consider making AI cards for the units in Ravaged Star to allow solo/co-op play some day?

I've said this on another video, but I wanna double down on how much I love the single attack and single defense rolls. It's quick and way easier to grok how good/bad an interaction will be. I also totally understand (and largely agree with) the no-reroll policy. Let stats be good, but let the rolls stand. The only thing I'd say is missing is a way to strategically modify the dice in some way. I'd like to have some sort of Strategem style system so that I can choose when or how to augment something. And maybe boosts are currently filling that niche, but I think they are too random to feel right for me. I also like how army-wide narratives/mechanics can be showcased by the strategems, whereas boosts are entirely dependent on the unit.

@Krasiph

8 ай бұрын

Also, I really like the d10s because they *do* allow for all those different modifiers to stack and not wildly swing things like d6s. It hits the sweet spot for y'all's goals imo

Man, D10’s, no re-rolls and one single round to hit and one to save? I AM ALL IN!

I really agree on the rerolling thing. 1st of all. It really slows down the game when both players can reroll anything. 2nd, it takes away the cool situations where "sometimes you just gotta roll a hard six" to win the game, make the save, destroy the Cylon Centurion. It takes away the awesome sense of desperate victory through sheer chance. Also It truly feels like 40K and GW wants to add more and more rules to mitigate chance. Which is very strange for a game that revolves around throwing dice. If you want to mitigate chance, you should ditch out dice completely and use something like a deck of cards with a set amount of specific results. Then both players know exactly at any point of the game that there are for example only 6 cards with a 5+ left in the current deck cycle. But that would in general take the game completely to a new direction.

I certainly like rolling D10 or D12 more, and the rest of the points make sense.

stick with the d10 systems and the alternative activations. love the way the tokens are being pulled from the bag as well.

I really enjoyed this, please do more of these! There's a wargame I designed (Illeria). For most of its playtesting existence, it used d10s, though near the end I switched to d6s. I actually did it for the reasons that drove you to pick d10s. Basically, characters rarely rolled more than a couple of dice, so I wanted every modifier to feel impactful. I also wasn't worried about having too many stacked modifiers. I can see how if I had stacked modifiers, and if I was rolling handfuls of dice, I probably would have made the same decision you did. I wonder too, why not use d20s? It seems like you'd have twice the fidelity, wouldn't that be better? Or does a 5% change in probability feel like too little to matter?

Maybe concider a roll under system? Roll under or equal to your stat to succeed

I too love 10s. I absolutely agree that the re-rolls in 40K has been way too much. I will be happy if you keep to your word that there will be no Re-Rolls in Ravaged Star. I like the roll once for the hit and once for defense, however I do believe that it shouldn't be a 50/50 on heavily armoured things with no mods. It doesn't feel like those things are armoured so I would like to see a shift with that. Basically I would do it like this Basic 5+, Trained 4+, and elite/heavy defense 3+. Yes, we should keep looking at chess to help us maintain what it means to have something strategic and still easy to learn. I dislike heavily symbol-ed dice cause it's like learning a new friggin language. I am working on a system that uses D4, D8, and D12. Not a fan of D100 have played some Five Leagues from the BorderLands and it's exhausting, too many things that just feel unimportant are constantly being rolled for. I like your Frankenstein monster, it helps to take good mechanics from elsewhere.

Some interesting content, you're on a roll, lmao 😂

There's another reason to wish that GW would consider other dice for their games, and that's that in any system that runs off of dice rolls determined by opposed stats (most commonly Strength vs Toughness in GW's case) and not using a large enough dice to account for the range of variance within those stats will inevitably lead to situations in which the differences in those stats effectively don't matter, which is a feel bad moment. For example: assuming for a moment that the average Strength of an attack in a GW game is 4, then due to the nature of how they do wound rolls there is effectively no mechanical difference between having 5 Toughness or 7, at least to the average attack. Same with S3 VS T4-5, or S5 VS T6-9! Basically, the dice you use may limit the numerical scale of stat ranges you can/should use for your game while still keeping the variations between those stats meaningful. Depending of course on how you use those stats. Nobody likes dead or meaningless numbers in their numbers game.

One advantage of d6 is that you can roll 2d6 add have a gaussian like distribution of results. Obviously it doesn't really work if you are making multiple rolls at once though. Also: I've got a 12 sided die, I've got the Dungeon Masters Guide, I've got Kitty Pryde And: keep rollin' rollin' rollin'

First thought before watching the video. Other dice are fine for small skirmish games, but d6's are easier to use for games with multiple squads of 10 or more troops and vehicles. Rolling a bucket of d6's for a 20 troop squad, you only have to pick out from 1-6 results. The same reason why d6's tend to have pips instead of numbers on them. 1-6 is enough fidelity for simple modifiers, unlike a d4 where even a plus one is a 25% improvement. I think the d6 is the "sweet spot" for speed versus fidelity, when playing with more than a squad.

I generally prefer larger numbered dice because it lets a designer make units more granular. I think a lot of the d6 systems struggle with really differentiating what makes 1 unit better than another since you only have so many options. I do wonder if that greater granularity would make balancing easier or harder though, because sometimes more options can just make things worse. Also, personally I think d20 is about the highest you would want to go, since it's the largest common die size so is easy to get ahold of, and something like a d100 isn't great cuz it limits you to rolling just the d100 pair for readability and we all know rolling a ton of dice at once can be very satisfying.

@m__y-t-s

8 ай бұрын

I find that d20s mean a bunch of fiddly +1s that just slow things down, or don't have a big enough impact, so I wouldn't go above d12. As for d100, while I love percentages for making it extremely easy to gauge the odds, rolling two dice at once is inconvenient and it's virtually always better to just divide by 5 and use a d20, because screw +3% nonsense. Kinda wish there was a 20-sided dice labelled up [5, 10, 15… 95, 00] but I've never seen one.

D10 was the first thing that really surprised me on yout test playes. And to be honest i REALLY like that! I think that it is much much much better system than d3, d6, 2d6 etc.

My comment was going to be that a d10 is an easier dice to work with fraction wise. I think this is a good presedence to set and likely more approachable for beginner gamers. The granularity bit is great too!