Cephalon Dusp's Archives

     I do have a page on useful RPG mechanics, ideas, and concepts on this blog and one of the concepts in there that of Dice Chain and Usage Dice. The central idea is this: Roll a die and if you roll at or below a specific number you drop down the chain. It gives a nice element of random chance to how many uses of something you get and makes tracking items like Arrows or Chalk very easy.     However, it can be very unclear how many uses you would expect  to get when you buy a Ud6 or Ud8 item. I have just gotten done doing some math, specifically using Markov Chains, and I believe my math holds up. Thus I have been able to produce this very handy chart: Usage Die Expected Uses Ud4 2 Ud6 5 Ud8 9 Ud10 14 Ud12 20     Now, that chart is certainly handy and can easily be recreated by noticing that each die adds 1/2 of its size to the number of expected use...

     One of the defining features of OSR games is how they handle gaining experience (XP) and levelling up. XP, which is the tool used to pace character growth, has a an enormous amount of sway in influencing how people interact with the game. Normally, OSR games make the primary source of XP treasure recovered from monsters or dungeons. Actually killing monsters is considered secondary, if it even gives XP at all.      The method of play that this pushes disincentivizes fighting monsters, since it is horribly dangerous and doesn't give great rewards, but also heavy incentivizes diving into dungeons and other locations that would have them because that is where treasure is found.       Compare that with a modern game like 5E, which either does XP by monster or by milestone. The implications of handing out XP primarily/solely based on defeated monster are pretty obvious in what they would incentivize. Milestone progression, however, entir...

    One system that keeps creeping into roleplaying games is the idea of skills. Effectively, they are tools meant to show that some characters are better at certain things than others. The origin of full skill systems can be fairly easily traced back to the original D&D Thief class.      Before thieves, there were only a few things characters could do (and they weren't officially skills) like listening at doors, being stealthy, and forcing open doors. All of these usually had a 1 or 2 in 6 chance of success. In contrast, thieves were given a list of special skills:  climb walls, find traps, hear noise, hide in shadows, move quietly, open locks, pick pockets, and read languages. These skills got rated with a % chance of success and whenever a thief wanted to use one of their skills, they would roll 1d100. If they rolled at or under their skill rating, they succeeded! Fairly simple.     The problem with Thief characters, and something people ha...