Dice Poll Results Analysis

Keep in mind this is a small sample population, a population of game designers.
I think some of the reason "why" has to do with how games have historically used dice. Most family and table top games use d6, and many include a "move" mechanic which makes people feel the need to roll high and get from point A to point B, first.

A per guess might be that we have all been influenced by the current mass market games. They use d6, we like d6.... i dunno

Not really... because of the historical aspect of it. Not sure, but I think if you polled a more RPG specific group of people, you would get a different result.

For the standard family, d6 are a norm. So maybe they feel comfortable with using d6.

Not sure... need to look at this a little more.

This is the only surprise to me. Almost 60% of people want to stick with 1-2 d6's. I would have thought that it would have strong negative connotations from the roll-and-move genre, and at the very least, people would be bored with them because they're so over done.

Jason

PROS
- More opponent involvement in play.
- Opponent has a sense of control over his own destiny.

This is, in my experience, a phantom benefit. In combat-heavy games with long turns (Axis and Allies, Shogun, Risk, History of the World), nothing is more annoying than to have just finished your 20 minute turn and go into the other room to take a break or get a soda, when you're called back to the table -- "Hey, you're being attacked, come roll your dice". There's no real involvement here, no control over your own destiny; you're just rolling dice. It's only interesting to have to roll dice in your own defense if there are some decisions involved on your part as well.

That's not to say that it isn't ever fun to have to "dice off" against an opponent, simply to say that "dice off"s don't necessarily mitigate the downtime problem or up the player involvement; in some cases, they just amplify that problem.

-Jeff

I was developing a game (as a matter of fact, the very game that prompted me to start this community) where I used dice, a 'randomizing factor' (I switched between a randomizing dice but eventually went with randomizing keywords; convuleted, I know), and a chart to determine success / failure. The basic reason is I wanted to figure a way to simulate not knowing how much you succeeded, but only whether you succeeded or failed. The reasoning behind this is that I wanted players to try something (specifically picking locks or disarming traps) and then decide for themselves whether the task was difficult or easy. I.E. If a player came up to an iron lock, and it took them 4 tries to unlock it, then they might come to the conclussion that iron locks are hard to unlock. Now they may have just gotten unlucky, so there conclusion may be incorrect. Ok, what I found was from playtesting such a mechanic (and to make it relative to this thread), is that most people hated it! I'm not sure if it was the complexity of success/fail resolution or just the frustration of not knowing what the 'target #' was, but most people really found the whole thing a nuissance. I think it was a combination of the two myself. I feel the same way about the combat resolution mechanic in Dungeonquest. Basically it's a rock scissors mechanic with combat resolving by comparing the two cards. I absolutely hate this in a mechanic. I can always remember how cheated I felt when a stupid little goblin knocked down half of my hit points. Now this sort of mechanic might be more strategic or 'realistic' (how realistic can fighting a goblin be really), but me personally, I'd much rather roll for a target #. Not sure why...

-Darke

Just out of curiosity, what would be the practical result of knowing the answer to this question?

I suspect, for myself, that Zzz is correct, and that probably the d6 is preferred because it's so familiar. But whatever the result turns out to be, what you'll know at the end of it is what die method people prefer.

Of course, that doesn't answer the two questions that I consider more important. The first is "given a 'non-ideal' die mechanic, will you still play?" For example, Axis and Allies uses "roll lower than", which is the overwhelming loser in your poll. But given that, people still play and love A&A; would "roll high" make them love it more? Are people able to see past their preference to recognize the cleverness of a designer at coming up with a different system?

(Incidentally, there's a 3rd option that your poll may not have addressed, that of "Throneworld" and "Pirate's Cove" in which you try to roll an exact number to score a "hit" and the number of dice you roll is related to some property of your attack).

The other question is, "Of [some set] of combat resolution mechanics, which do you prefer and why?" No matter whether it's "roll high" or "roll low", most dice mechanics are going to be similar. Risk and Axis and Allies, while different, are in the same "family". But there are other ways of resolving combat; using cards, for example, or the "cube tower" of Wallenstein. (my personal favorite). It seems that understanding which of these kinds of options people prefer could answer bigger questions about what kind of combat system you use based on considerations of luck vs decisions in combat, etc.

My fear is that with this poll, you'll be able to base your combat system on exactly the right "aesthetic" choices (roll high, roll a d6, etc) but whether the game as a whole (or the combat system specifically) will appeal to people will have almost nothing to do with these aesthetic considerations. I say that only because I've never, ever read a review of a game that said "In the combat system, you roll a d6 -- awesome!" or "the combat involves trying to outroll your opponent -- I love it!"

Just curious,

Jeff