Dice mechanic

[Hugh Neilson]

I'd say Runequest and all those other Basic Roll Playing Games are a pretty large group of games that use Roll Low. d20 was the first D&D iteration that consolidated all mechanics to a "roll high" methodology. Lots of games are not "roll high to succeed", RPG or otherwise (roll high in monopoly and you land on a utility, a red property and then go to jail; double sixes in Backgammon can be good or bad - double ones can be pretty sweet).

[Greywind]

Dice mechanic? Where do I get my dice tuned up?

[Wardsman]

Savage Worlds, Fate, the Gajillion games that are clones of or use a version fo the D&D rules, Numenera (AKA Cypher System), Cortex, Traveller (all versions), FFG Star Wars, FFG Warhammer 40k RPGs, Ars Magica, Shadowrun, Fuzion, Pretty much every other system ex Hero and GURPS.  Also the original World of Darkness is Roll high on both dice and number of successes to succeed..

Ghostbusters was roll but not too high if I recall correctly.

Again I don't see the fuss but I was exposed to percentile systems early on and did hop around so I didn't get used to something.

 

The only problem I've ever had going system to system was hero speed vs BRP's strike ranks. The are similar but not the same and that can mess you up when you are playing both heavily at the same time. 

 

THAC0 never did make sense to me. Armor does not make you harder to hit.

[Greywind]

No, but armor, especially in D&D, does make it harder to get an effective hit in.

[Hugh Neilson]

Wardsman's comment on Ghostbusters brings back a memory of the old Marvel Supers (the old FASERIP system) game, where you wanted to roll high to get a better result, but if you got the highest possible result with a ranged attack, it killed the target. Which resulted in your character losing all of his Karma (combined xp and dice modifying pool) unless you spent a pretty significant amount of karma to reduce the result. So another "roll high, but not too high" game.

[Hugh Neilson]

Some games also had bonuses for doubles - Mayfair's DC Heroes comes to mind. That was roll high on 2d10 (added, not percentile) but doubles let you roll again and keep adding, so a 19 was not as good as double 8's.

[Tasha]

Some games also had bonuses for doubles - Mayfair's DC Heroes comes to mind. That was roll high on 2d10 (added, not percentile) but doubles let you roll again and keep adding, so a 19 was not as good as double 8's.

Exploding dice mechanics which IIRC started with Ars Magica. Savage Worlds is probably the most popular game that has Exploding Dice Mechanics.

 

Exploding dice, is when you roll maximum you get to roll another die to add to the pool, as long as you can keep rolling max you can keep rolling more dice to add to the pool.

[Hugh Neilson]

DC Mayfair was similar, except the explosion was with doubles, so rolling double 2's, then double 8's, then double 5's would mean a roll of 30, with another roll (maybe more doubles) still to be added.

[Ninja-Bear]

Exploding dice. WEG's Star Wars. The wild die! You use one different colored D6 if you roll 6 (because everythung is roll high) you add that 6 and roll again. And as long as you roll a 6 you can keep adding to it. I have had a run of 3 rerolls in a row. But if you roll a 1 then you lose yhay die and substract the highest die.