Spending time on this forum, and thinking about the subject of dice rolls in video games, I came to a number of realisations or conclusions which I would like to share. If anyone wishes to do so, feel free to respond with your own findings, I’m trying to form a better mental framework on how to do j…

[image] Aster F: I’m a little surprised you’re lumping Disco Elysium with “games that do this badly” DE does characterize the player as a bumbling fool; this is the entire premise for Harry’s story. Some people find that off-putting. That’s not a problem with the mechanics though. The mechani…

we are in agreement :slight_smile:

It hasn’t been mentioned and assume everyone is familiar with Fallen London’s QBN “grind” mechanics. A QBN (quality based narrative) might be thought of as a gamebook on steroids. In this case the Game Master is the dice and the randomness of card-drawing, and the stats/variables/qualities the chara…

My favorite RPG GM advice about dice is from Nathan Russell’s Freeform Universal RPG rulebook (free download; used to be popular among solo RPGers, but not sure if many still play it): “Every time you call for a die roll it should mean something interesting is going to happen, No MATTER THE RESULT…

I sadly hadn’t been able to respond all day, so here’s me reading everything that has been posted in the meantime. [image] Aster F: I’m curious if you think all of these points need to be implemented for a game to do this in a satisfying way, or if something else about DE dissatisfies you. It, …

[image] Randozart: ( @HAL9000 I promise I’ll read your link later to see how Charge and Dash handle it) It’s not that it handles it in a specific way; it just doesn’t stop the progress of the story, is all. However, the one mechanic that I feel is a game changer for Charge is the Momentum sys…

[image] Randozart: I believe this is advice echoed by so many designers in the indie scene. In fact, I think it was originally mentioned by Vincent Baker in Apocalypse World if I recall correctly. I was pretty sure that this advice predated AW (which drew on at least a decade of prior art in …

[image] Adam Biltcliffe : I asked Vincent (dude is super approachable and nice!) and he said he doesn’t think that advice actually appears in AW at all, because it’s advice to the game designer, not to the GM. In which case, my bad. I’d loathe to spread misinformation, so thanks for verifying…

[image] Randozart: I feel this applies less to digital RPGs, for the mere reason that not everything can be interesting, and the author of the narrative is not directly able to connect with the player of the narrative,and thus estimate where the line is between interesting and punishing. Writin…

[image] Randozart: Any ideas on this? In the context to @pelle ’s comment about keeping the story interesting and always moving forward, and you wondering if it’s viable for digital games because TTRPGs are mostly human adlib… I think you have to write a lot of conditional/branching prose tha…

The Interactive Fiction Community Forum

Realisations about narrative dice mechanics — everything I have learned so far

Authoring General Design Discussions