Dice 'sizes' and quantity

How is this being dealt with in the ADOM PnP?

As Thomas pointed out (I think) at some point, one of the joyous things about computerised RPG is that you can have dice of any size you like, even dice that would be downright irrational if in a physical form. (d123? Easy!)

And you can roll as many of them as you like at any point. (1000d10, to cite a simple example, would be impossible to do in PnP.)

Also, you can add any modifiers you like to them. (123d123+123!)

With PnP, it's not so easy. Look at AD&D Second Edition (the BEST edition! :)) uses d3, d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d100 - although d100 is usually resolved by rolling 2 d10's, with one nominated as 'tens' and one nominated as 'units'.

Think of all the mechanics present in ADOM that can't be properly reproduced with that dice-set, and without the benefit of having a computer's powers of mathematics! (Most of them)

Personally, I think the d100 system (for all kinds of skills) is the best, simply because a decimal system is easiest to make sense of.

But I understand that Thomas intends to use d6, because they are the most commonly-available dice. He mentioned in his blog that when he started playing D&D (before I was born! And I am no longer young), they were the only dice available in regional Germany, where he's from.

So, using d6's, how will the PnP system reproduce the ADOM experience?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by magpie

How is this being dealt with in the ADOM PnP?

As Thomas pointed out (I think) at some point, one of the joyous things about computerised RPG is that you can have dice of any size you like, even dice that would be downright irrational if in a physical form. (d123? Easy!)

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d123 might be tricky, but low value stuff like d7, d9 I usually handled [when dealing with pen and paper RPG] rather simple. Take d10, roll it anything bellow dX is roll, anything above reroll, the close your dice gets to the desired value the better [d8 for d7, d6 for d5 and so on].

hi, i am not a statistician, but to me it seems that there is not as much advantage to that as implied

There are three numbers to change in the outcome of a dice throw AdB+C, namely A, B and C.

C is constant that any pen can do.

B is the number of cases that a dice can distinguish in between. Anything that a D20 can't do? Then just throw it twice and you have 400 equally probable cases.

A is the number of dices that fit in your hand. For A=1 you have equally possible outcomes, and the other limit is A=Infinite, where you got a normal distribution. Now, with A=4 you're visually already very close to a normal distribution.

For a 4d6:
1 to
0.0008
0.0031
0.0077
0.0154
0.0270
0.0432
0.0617
0.0802
0.0965
0.1080
0.1127
0.1080
0.0965
0.0802
0.0617
0.0432
0.0270
0.0154
0.0077
0.0031
0.0008

The main thing you gain from very large numbers of A are distributions with long tails that are peaky in the middle, thus making many events highly common while still extremely rarely producing sth completely rare. A 101d6 has 506 possible outcomes, the probability list starts with:

1 to
0.000000025510778 * 10^-71
0.000002576588624 * 10^-71
0.000131406019838 * 10^-71
0.004511606681095 * 10^-71
0.117301773708468 * 10^-71

....

The first 100 elements together have about 10^-20 to 1 probability while the middle hundred have about 99.7 % probability. You might say that that should be useful for all those one in a hundred years events that no player will ever live to see (your player accidentally quantum tunneling trough a wall will walking against it?) but unlikely events are already very well represented in moderate dices.
The first elements of a 7d6, beginning with the chance of throwing a 7:

1 to
0.000003572245085
0.000025005715592
0.000100022862369
0.000300068587106
0.000750171467764
0.001650377229081
0.003275748742570
0.005954932556013
0.010027291952446
0.015778606538637
0.023355338363054

no guarantee on the numbers, but anyway, I guess my point is clear: The law of large numbers is so strong that not that large numbers are required to simulate it's behaviour quite accurately.