When will we finally get rid of d6

[stormrider888]

I don't know about many other people but I would LOVE to see minature companies move away from d6 and go to d10. You can get them in mutiple from various places and it would give a more varied group of ships, races, classes and types as well as outcomes.

 

[Rob_A]

Go play dark age.
That uses D20, twice as good as D10.

MGP uses D6 AND D10 in SST.

 

[Triggy]

Well on that general theme of logic, you may as well move to d100 or d1000...

It all depends on what you want out of the game and how complicated you want to make systems. d6 is easier because everyone is familiar with it and there are few options to refer to. However, the flipside is that there are fewer gradations available for results. In an ideal world the whole thing would be computer modelled and highly detailed.

For some games a d10 may work better than a d6 currently does. Do you have any specific suggestions on how some of the games could be improved by a d10? (and not lose the benefits of speed/simplicity mainly seen in ACtA and VaS)

 

[stormrider888]

I was thinking more about the stats lines and that type of thing rather than for choices or outcomes to conditions happening.
I have been a wargamer for almost 15 years and lets face it d6 is simple and the dice are very cheap but there are very little differences in the races statlines. The only way to tell a lot of them apart is by the equipment.
This is not a rant just a long time observation, thank GOD I don't play 40k anymore it was SO MUCH WORSE than anything that Mongoose has put out. Heck the only thing it had going for it was tons of really great fluff.

 

[PaulB]

Why not roll two 6-sided die and get yourself a D11 result, rather than look for another way to get your numbers? (i.e. 2d6-1)

Just as you can roll 3d6 or 4d6-3 to get something D20-like... or roll two 6-sided die in a D100 style to get results for bigger tables (with results from 11 - 66... and a whole 36 different results).

You can adapt your dice instead of casting them aside...

Paul

 

[Mikko Leho]

Why not roll two 6-sided die and get yourself a D11 result, rather than look for another way to get your numbers? (i.e. 2d6-1)

Just as you can roll 3d6 or 4d6-3 to get something D20-like... or roll two 6-sided die in a D100 style to get results for bigger tables (with results from 11 - 66... and a whole 36 different results).

You can adapt your dice instead of casting them aside...

No you cannot, the distribution of results is entirely different when you roll more than one die. Here is a picture showing the different frequences of results when using two 6 sided dice:

When using only one 10 sided die, all the bars would have been of equal height for values from 1 to 10.

Image taken from http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/simul/introman.htm

 

[Galatea]

I don't know about many other people but I would LOVE to see minature companies move away from d6 and go to d10. You can get them in mutiple from various places and it would give a more varied group of ships, races, classes and types as well as outcomes.

Starship Troopers uses D6 and D10 and works very well with that, which is also caused by the fact that the stats of the units aren't limited to numbers between 1 and 10 (one of the biggest problem in 40k).
A King Tanker has Kill 13 and there are few weapons that can actually beat that.

D6 and D10 together provide you enough space to differenciate between light weapony (it would be silly to give a standard weapon D10 damage - what would you take for bigger weapons, the even more silly D20?) and the big guns (D10+4, or multiple times like 2xD10+3 or 3xD10+D6).

 

[hithero]

Adding dice together is not an option as you can not then roll a handful of dice for several models shooting, you would have to do tham all one at a time. I have no problems with D6, works fine for me.

 

[Xorrandor]

Reasons for d10 over d6:
* Easier to do scatter: d10's have an obvious pointing direction, which has to be painted on a d6.
* More design space to differentiate between units and armies.

Reasons for d6 over d10:
* Everyone has lots of d6. Only gamers have lots of d10. We wouldn't want gamers to play, would we? :roll:

I'm actually happy with SST's happy medium, although you could accomplish something pretty similar with small arms being d10-3 and bigger guns being d10+4. It wouldn't be exactly the same, but if you needed to design a single-die-type game for a bet or something d10 seems like the way to go.

Adding dice together is not an option as you can not then roll a handful of dice for several models shooting, you would have to do tham all one at a time.

I'll point out that you could roll multiple combinations of dice, as long as they are differently colored. I will agree that it is inelegant, though.

 

[lastbesthope]

d6 has two major advantages, availability and market penetration.

Lots of places sell d6s that don't sell any other dice

d6s come with almost every normal board game in existence.


LBH

 

[PaulB]

No you cannot, the distribution of results is entirely different when you roll more than one die.

I didn't say anything about distribution curves... ... just that you can roll similar numbers.

Paul

 

[Rob_A]

pwnd.