Lots of Dice and a little Cepheus Engine, too

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Well, it depends on what you think makes one race different from another. If you think races are mostly similar, then a simple static modifier here and there is appropriate. But, for a Hard Science Fiction setting, where different races have very little, if any, biology in common, it makes sense for the distribution of one stat to be different than the distribution of another, and not just some flat bonus. For instance, if you had some sort of big, hulking, clumsy brute race, it would make sense that they might have dice with more faces to represent a larger average strength, even though they can fail just as badly as another race, on account of their clumsiness. Should Hivers and Vegans, for example, *really* be so similar to humans in terms of performance? I don’t think so...

Sure, but that's just sticking to normal dice. I'm fine saying that humans roll 2d6 for stats and aliens roll 3d6 or 1d4 or 3d20 or whatever. I just think the idea of 'baking modifiers into custom dice' with weird number ranges is silly.

No sillier than wanting custom artwork for dice; if the dice faces are already going to feature custom artwork, they might as well feature custom values. Q Workshop uses a laser cutting process to put custom dice faces on blank dice already produced in bulk. Custom faces are no longer any sillier than choosing a different polyhedron, so when considering the best possible dice to use, that should be taken into account.

 

[fusor]

No sillier than wanting custom artwork for dice; if the dice faces are already going to feature custom artwork, they might as well feature custom values. Q Workshop uses a laser cutting process to put custom dice faces on blank dice already produced in bulk. Custom faces are no longer any sillier than choosing a different polyhedron, so when considering the best possible dice to use, that should be taken into account.

I really don't know what you expect to achieve from this argument. If you think that Traveller is going to be updated with custom dice then sorry, it's not going to happen. You're pretty much the only person who is obsessed with finding "the best possible dice" to use (for some arbitrary value of "best" here), when nobody else is complaining that the system can't model probabilities properly. Sure, some tables are broken in Traveller, but those are the designer's fault for not thinking out the results properly, not the fault of the dice being used.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

I’m just saying that Traveller risks being left in the dust if no one thinks about redeveloping it from the ground up, including the dice being used themselves, because the factors making 2d6 a wise choice are no longer valid.

 

[NOLATrav]

I’m just saying that Traveller risks being left in the dust if no one thinks about redeveloping it from the ground up, including the dice being used themselves, because the factors making 2d6 a wise choice are no longer valid.

Can you provide a dice paradigm that is valid? Marking a d8 as 0-7 is to me problematic, akin to the Star Wars symbol dice, requiring re-learning what dice faces fundamentally mean. If we were to apply it to tasks, do we also apply it to characteristics? So throw 2d8 for Dex, my Dex ranges from 0-14? Or do characteristics get a weird, unnecessary +1DM for a range of 1-15? Or the dice read 1-8 for characteristics only?

0 should never be an option for PC characteristics and yes it's an extreme example but still.

2d6 or d66 is admittedly a limited range but it seems to function well for Traveller, dated or not. Traveller from its very roots was about building your own universe and odd results be damned (i.e., use your imagination to explain the odd results). The fact that the published setting overwhelmed the mechanics doesn't eliminate Ref and/or Player creativity. And now Mongoose has done away with multi-ton computers, provided options for biological ships and vehicles, made brain implants a muster benefit, provided rules for subdermal armor and computer-enhanced clothing as well as added drones to many levels of the game. In the newest iteration they provided ion and tachyon cannons as well as rules for strapping chemical-thrust engines to grav-centric craft to push speeds well beyond the hoary old 6G. And re-wrote the fuel consumption rules to be more in keeping with science as we know it now but still keep a bit of the old Trav flavor. All within a 2d6 paradigm.

Methinks thou doth protest too much.

BTW Traveller5 has turned the 2d6 paradigm on its head, requiring multiple d6's to be thrown - where lowest is better.

 

[Prime_Evil]

I’m just saying that Traveller risks being left in the dust if no one thinks about redeveloping it from the ground up, including the dice being used themselves, because the factors making 2d6 a wise choice are no longer valid.

Do you mean that d20s is now more common than the kind of d6 you got in every Monopoly game?

Or that a linear probability distribution based upon a single d20 is more "now" than an old-fashioned bell curve based upon multiple d6's?

 

[AndrewW]

In the newest iteration they provided ion and tachyon cannons as well as rules for strapping chemical-thrust engines to grav-centric craft to push speeds well beyond the hoary old 6G.

Well, going past 6G isn't new, was possible in the 1st edition Mongoose High Guard as well.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Let me be clear here... I play lots of RPGs, from GURPS, to Pathfinder, to Earthdawn, to Exalted. GURPS wouldn’t be GURPS without a normal-ish curve. Earthdawn wouldn’t be Earthdawn without exploding step dice. Pathfinder wouldn’t be an evolution of d20 based gameplay without that d20. Exalted... well, Exalted has its own issues stemming from its oddball dice-pool-based play. I’m not advocating for any particular dice; what I am advocating for is an honest discussion about what dice would make Traveller more Traveller-like, or more improved somehow, than it is now, since modern dice manufacturing has made any particular choice of die just as reasonable as any other.

Rolling 2d8 numbered 0-7 isn’t any more unusual than rolling d10s marked 0-9. A zero is a zero, unless the game system specifically says it’s a 10 or something. 2d8 numbered 0-7 are going to have the same average as regular old 2d6... the results are a bit more spread out, though; there’s a possibility of rolling better or worse than you used to.

I’m not saying that d20s are more common than Monopoly dice... I’m saying the difference in margins is insignificant, and that modern board games don’t think twice about using custom dice! Crystal Caste even had to sue Hasbro over using their patented pyramid-capped antiprism d6es with their Millennium Edition of... Monopoly. There just plain is no reason not to use the best possible dice.

So... in case you didn’t get the message... “Hear ye, hear ye! The d6, the King of Dice, is dethroned! Long live the Polyhedral Oligarchy!”

 

[theodis]

I’m just saying that Traveller risks being left in the dust if no one thinks about redeveloping it from the ground up, including the dice being used themselves, because the factors making 2d6 a wise choice are no longer valid.

Not going to happen. Mongoose just renewed the license. It is now vaild through 2025 (I think) and they just came up with a new version of Traveller. A version, I might add, that directly lead to the development of the Cepheus Engine. There also is T5, dubbed as the "ultimate" Traveller by Marc Miller. So for the foreseeable future (my bet is about 9 years), that's what we got.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

The dice that make Traveller more Traveller IS the D6. The fact that this game has been around for almost 40 years says that for this game the D6 IS the iconic die that makes it more "Traveller". When T20 came out, one of the biggest complaints was that it wasn't D6 based.

For this game, TRAVELLER, D6 IS the best dice.

For other games, other die systems work better. D&D wouldn't be D&D without D20 etc. It is part of what makes the game that game and makes each game unique.

 

[Prime_Evil]

I tend to agree that unless there is a really good reason to change the dice, it makes sense to stick with the d6. I can understand the urge to update the setting in various ways, and can sympathize with this urge, but I'm not seeing any strong argument for modifying the system's underlying probabilities. It may be possible to argue that 2d6 doesn't have sufficient granularity or that the bell curve isn't as pronounced as with 3d6 (see GURPS), but this doesn't seem to be the crux of your argument. Am I missing something?

 

[Sigtrygg]

Ever try using a sort of cortex system for Traveller?
Characteristics can be 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12
Skills can be 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12

A task attempt is made by combining a characteristic with a skill, or two characteristics (the same one doubled is possible too), or rarely two skills (the same one doubled is possible too).

For T20 many years ago I substituted a 2d10 roll for the d20 to get a more CT feel to the system.

Never thought of basing a system on 2d10 read as 0-9 for results from 0 to 18... added advantage that you can use them as %... hmm

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I worked on an unpublished (as far as I know) system using only D10 called Dirt Simple RolePlaying (DSRP). Used 4d10 for characteristics and the DM was the characteristic value divided by 10, so +0 to +4.

Worked quite well.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

The dice that make Traveller more Traveller IS the D6. The fact that this game has been around for almost 40 years says that for this game the D6 IS the iconic die that makes it more "Traveller". When T20 came out, one of the biggest complaints was that it wasn't D6 based.

For this game, TRAVELLER, D6 IS the best dice.

For other games, other die systems work better. D&D wouldn't be D&D without D20 etc. It is part of what makes the game that game and makes each game unique.

Right, but for what reason is it the best, other than “because it’s always been d6es”? What makes d6es objectively better for Traveller? If you had to justify d6es to someone who has never played Traveller before, and thus, doesn’t care about your nostalgia for it, what would you tell them to justify the decision in a modern context?

I tend to agree that unless there is a really good reason to change the dice, it makes sense to stick with the d6. I can understand the urge to update the setting in various ways, and can sympathize with this urge, but I'm not seeing any strong argument for modifying the system's underlying probabilities. It may be possible to argue that 2d6 doesn't have sufficient granularity or that the bell curve isn't as pronounced as with 3d6 (see GURPS), but this doesn't seem to be the crux of your argument. Am I missing something?

I’m not saying a change should be made without justification; what I’m trying to say is that staying with d6es shouldn’t be made without justification either, because the purely business rationales that originally justified that choice are simply no longer valid. The price of trivially better dice is so small that you might as well require them.

 

[simonh]

No, you really don’t. The player subtracts -8, but the GM adds or subtracts the more vague situational modifiers on top of that. Locking you into the most common target number isn’t a bad thing, when all the other numbers are either obvious to the player, or subtle effects hidden by the GM.

It means you're not always comparing your roll to zero, so there's often a final subtraction form target number which is what you're trying to avoid. It seems to me live a very small win. Yes in many cases there's one less add or subtract in the task resolution out of, what, maybe 4 or 5 modifiers? (default target of 8, target modifier, skill mod, attribute mod, equipment mod, various combat mods such as range when appropriate. So anything from 2 to 6 or more modifiers). That seems like a very small, marginal win for all the effort of teaching people to use an unusual die combo and making everyone buy new dice.

Now if you want to come up with a completely different resolution system, attribute scale, etc that requires new dice I've no real problem with that. I'm always up for looking at a new gaming system if it has something novel to offer, but changing a dice scale from 2D6 to an odd form of 2D8 is hardly a groundbreaking game design change.

And, again, we were speculating on the best dice to use for producing the best possible feel of a next-generation Traveller game; the obsolete canon technology and the obsolete canon setting contribute nothing to that; after you eliminate both of those things, what is left from Traveller canon to preserve?

There's nothing obsolete about 2D6. Plenty of modern systems use sixers. Apocalypse World and it's descendents such as Dungeon World, perhaps the most exciting new systems in recent years, use 2D6. GUMSHOE uses a single D6. In what way do you think it's obsolete?

The OTU is also far from obsolete. There have been various attempts to push new settings for Traveller, more so by Mongoose than any other publisher, but still they keep coming back to the OTU because it brings in the sales. That doesn't strike me as a sign of obsolescence.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

The dice that make Traveller more Traveller IS the D6. The fact that this game has been around for almost 40 years says that for this game the D6 IS the iconic die that makes it more "Traveller". When T20 came out, one of the biggest complaints was that it wasn't D6 based.

For this game, TRAVELLER, D6 IS the best dice.

For other games, other die systems work better. D&D wouldn't be D&D without D20 etc. It is part of what makes the game that game and makes each game unique.

Right, but for what reason is it the best, other than “because it’s always been d6es”? What makes d6es objectively better for Traveller? If you had to justify d6es to someone who has never played Traveller before, and thus, doesn’t care about your nostalgia for it, what would you tell them to justify the decision in a modern context?

I tend to agree that unless there is a really good reason to change the dice, it makes sense to stick with the d6. I can understand the urge to update the setting in various ways, and can sympathize with this urge, but I'm not seeing any strong argument for modifying the system's underlying probabilities. It may be possible to argue that 2d6 doesn't have sufficient granularity or that the bell curve isn't as pronounced as with 3d6 (see GURPS), but this doesn't seem to be the crux of your argument. Am I missing something?

I’m not saying a change should be made without justification; what I’m trying to say is that staying with d6es shouldn’t be made without justification either, because the purely business rationales that originally justified that choice are simply no longer valid. The price of trivially better dice is so small that you might as well require them.

I hear what you are saying, but I am not sure you hear what I am saying. You seem to think that there is a "best" dice convention for Traveller. What I am saying is that the D6 is part of what makes Traveller what it is, take that away and you have a game that is not quite Traveller (as T20 found out). You can make it similar but are you actually making it BETTER?

Personally, I play lots of RPG die systems, each has their advantages and disadvantages, but I have never found one that is the "BEST". So your arguments that there is a "better" dice convention for Traveller doesn't work for me. To me, I can play in the Third Imperium using D100, D20 or D6 - doesn't matter, so there is no "BEST".

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

No, you really don’t. The player subtracts -8, but the GM adds or subtracts the more vague situational modifiers on top of that. Locking you into the most common target number isn’t a bad thing, when all the other numbers are either obvious to the player, or subtle effects hidden by the GM.

It means you're not always comparing your roll to zero, so there's often a final subtraction form target number which is what you're trying to avoid. It seems to me live a very small win. Yes in many cases there's one less add or subtract in the task resolution out of, what, maybe 4 or 5 modifiers? (default target of 8, target modifier, skill mod, attribute mod, equipment mod, various combat mods such as range when appropriate. So anything from 2 to 6 or more modifiers). That seems like a very small, marginal win for all the effort of teaching people to use an unusual die combo and making everyone buy new dice.

Now if you want to come up with a completely different resolution system, attribute scale, etc that requires new dice I've no real problem with that. I'm always up for looking at a new gaming system if it has something novel to offer, but changing a dice scale from 2D6 to an odd form of 2D8 is hardly a groundbreaking game design change.

Yes, but it’s the GM who decides that you’re not comparing it to 0; the player compares his roll to 0, and the GM adds or subtracts a difficulty modifier on top of that based on the task at hand. The player never needs to know about the additional modifier; so he never needs to know if it’s 8, or 9, or whatever. Better to just bake it in.

2d8 is just an example for directions we could go in; the argument is, “Why not something else?”.

And, again, we were speculating on the best dice to use for producing the best possible feel of a next-generation Traveller game; the obsolete canon technology and the obsolete canon setting contribute nothing to that; after you eliminate both of those things, what is left from Traveller canon to preserve?

There's nothing obsolete about 2D6. Plenty of modern systems use sixers. Apocalypse World and it's descendents such as Dungeon World, perhaps the most exciting new systems in recent years, use 2D6. GUMSHOE uses a single D6. In what way do you think it's obsolete?

The OTU is also far from obsolete. There have been various attempts to push new settings for Traveller, more so by Mongoose than any other publisher, but still they keep coming back to the OTU because it brings in the sales. That doesn't strike me as a sign of obsolescence.

I’m not saying 2d6 is obsolete. I’m saying its use has to be justified as being the best option for Traveller, among all the other available options that are just as affordable. Is it the best distribution for Traveller? Is it the best average value? Is it the best range of values? No one has made this case yet.

Traveller Canon is obsolete. HabCat and the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog chew up canon systems day by day, overtly producing results that are not consistent with the “Imagineering” behind Traveller’s canon! We’re going to reach a point where Traveller’s canon has been proven wrong so often that no one new wants to play it. So if the system itself isn’t the best possible version, Traveller is just going to die off. Hence, my discussion about picking dice based on producing the best possible Traveller feel and utility, since economy of scale issues, the main justification for 2d6 to begin with, are defunct.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

I hear what you are saying, but I am not sure you hear what I am saying. You seem to think that there is a "best" dice convention for Traveller. What I am saying is that the D6 is part of what makes Traveller what it is, take that away and you have a game that is not quite Traveller (as T20 found out). You can make it similar but are you actually making it BETTER?

Personally, I play lots of RPG die systems, each has their advantages and disadvantages, but I have never found one that is the "BEST". So your arguments that there is a "better" dice convention for Traveller doesn't work for me. To me, I can play in the Third Imperium using D100, D20 or D6 - doesn't matter, so there is no "BEST".

“Best” is always within a context; I agree that there’s no “universally best” dice to use... but there is “Best for Traveller”; best in producing the same feel, and potentially with less downsides than the current 2d6 approach. There are also game systems for which the dice mechanic is inconvenient. I happen to enjoy Earthdawn’s step mechanics, but I can also understand why some find it offputting. Exalted has some significant issues with its dice pool mechanic, as well. So, once we throw out the invalid assumption that d6es make more economic sense, what dice would produce the best gameplay for a game of Traveller?

 

[fusor]

“Best” is always within a context; I agree that there’s no “universally best” dice to use... but there is “Best for Traveller”; best in producing the same feel, and potentially with less downsides than the current 2d6 approach.

And those downsides are...? Has anyone (other than you, apparently) really gone "man, I simply cannot play this game without an easy way to make a roll vs a 1% probability"?

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

“Best” is always within a context; I agree that there’s no “universally best” dice to use... but there is “Best for Traveller”; best in producing the same feel, and potentially with less downsides than the current 2d6 approach.

And those downsides are...? Has anyone (other than you, apparently) really gone "man, I simply cannot play this game without an easy way to make a roll vs a 1% probability"?

That was someone else. I’m merely trying to point out that historical justifications for 2d6 are no longer valid, and so revisiting the question of what dice to use is in order. Apparently, no one is sufficiently self-aware about Traveller to either justify or criticize the merits of either sticking with or making a change.

 

[fusor]

That was someone else. I’m merely trying to point out that historical justifications for 2d6 are no longer valid, and so revisiting the question of what dice to use is in order.

It's not in order at all, because it's not actually a problem. You certainly haven't demonstrated that it is.