Roleplay Suggestion - Dice Roll System.

[Nekrul]

Hello everybody!

Saurok speakin'. Gnash and I had a bit of a discussion the other day after the Blackblood meeting which, even though a roleplay scene (which is good!), turned out to be quite long and messy due to various factors. Especially when it came to conflicts handled through emotes, ie. my character trying to punch another character in the face for being insulting.

Now let's take such a scenario where an exchange of words suddenly turn into an exchange of physical actions. Either both players could just emote away and constantly dodge attacks or always be able to hit, OR wouldn't it be more interesting if the outcome of a physical action was left to chance, ie. a dice roll ( /roll in the chat command of the game ) to see who wins?

As a heavy roleplayer both in World of Darkness and Dungeons & Dragons, these sort of systems always seemed more appropiate to me, as it kept the roleplay fluent and fair. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. It keeps you on your toes, having to adapt to the unfolding events. More importantly, no one could hide behind their overpowered emotes and for instance, be able to dodge a shot from a rifle five yards away. Gnash and I then took it further by saying how the dice roll, or dice pool, could be influenced by the level of your character so that if you're level 80, you can roll between 1-80. This would then be able to demonstrate the power of the character compared to a character with a lower level. Let me try to demonstrate an example.

Garrosh (Level 80) the orc and Raztafari the troll (level 20) are having a bit of an argument. Things get out of hand, and Garrosh tries to punch the troll in the face to shut him up once and for all! Raztafari, however, is rather fond of his face and decides that he'll try to dodge the attack. IE, Garrosh will roll a dice between 1-80 to see if he hits Raztafari in the face, whereas Raztafari will roll a dice between 1-20 to see if he is able to dodge the attack.

Garrosh's dice ends up with a 74.

Raztafaris dice ends up with a 14.

Thus, Garrosh is able to smack Raztafari's face up and send the troll away with his tail tucked between his legs.

Of course, one dice roll shouldn't decide the outcome for a whole encounter. Several rolls would be done depending on the situation where there is a contested roll, ie. player versus player.

I've tried this out every now and then, /w people to play with if they're alright with it. And the times we did, I had some of the best roleplay I've had on this server just because of the fact that both players had equal chances of getting their way. Of course, that means I lost my action rolls (failed to pick someone up, punch them, stop them from hitting me, etc) a lot of the time as well. But losing can be fun! It means you have to stay on your toes and adapt to the roleplay scenario, which in turn makes it more creative, vivid and genuine. And it keeps things balanced.

Of course, common sense would have to play a big part in these rolls. For instance, my character Saurok who has a high stamina but low agility seeing as he's a warrior tank, wouldn't suddenly be able to jump five feet into the air and fire a bow like a ninja even if he managed to win on a related contestant roll. Stay true to your character's strengths and weaknesses.

Anyway, we thought that it'd be an interesting idea to share with our roleplay community. Thoughts?

[Greggar]

It all sounds good to me! But let's say my Greggy is attempting to dodge something, and as rogue he's very agile. Would I get a roll + 10 or something regarding dodging, running, agile and speed in general? and regarding physical strenght against a warrior a roll - 10?

[Garashna]

Rolling dice is all fine and dandy...

Unless you do an rp fight with an IC friend with a 1-100 outcome and you roll a 99 on hitting his nose.

Needless to say... after that he liked me slightly less >.>

But they were fun times anyway!

[Nekrul]

It all sounds good to me! But let's say my Greggy is attempting to dodge something, and as rogue he's very agile. Would I get a roll + 10 or something regarding dodging, running, agile and speed in general? and regarding physical strenght against a warrior a roll - 10?

I quite like the sound of this. But we'd have to take into account that we don't want to complicate the rolls too much. After all we'd like this dice roll system to keep the roleplay fluent and smooth, and not to cripple it with mathematics related to dice bonuses.

I like Greggar's suggestion a lot. I'm just struggling to include it in a way that won't complicate it too much. I guess that if your character's highest stat is for instance agility when you're trying to dodge, you should get a bonus. If it's strength, you'd get a bonus to hitting someone, and if it's stamina, you'd get a bonus for resisting pain perhaps. So instead of saying "I'm a warrior, I'm automatically superstrong!' and using that as justification, you'd have to have a look at your character's in game statistics.

[Therak]

I'm not too fond of the rolling myself. Usually because of the pure unfairness in some cases. Gruthikk is a smith first and a warrior second, there should be very little chance of him landing a blow on a blademester. It also tends to slow down things. Ofcourse, NOT using rolls would require people to actually be SENSIBLE about things. And we all know how that'll end. It might be the lesser of two evils, but I still prefer the duels we run with

[Gnash]

I'd like to add something. An emote fight in WoW is not an epic fight scene of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Be to the point. An emote fight lasting longer than ten minutes is by definition a FAILURE.

One way of cutting short an emote fight is by agreeing upon the amount of Hit Points both players have. This is not dependent of level! For instance, you and your adversary decide that each of you has to take three hits before collapsing, feinting, or heck even dying. In this case both players would have 3 Hit Points. So in other words, if you get hit three times before the opponent does, you lose the battle. Clean and transparent. The amount of Hit Points should ideally be scaled to the situation in which the emote fight is taking place.

A bar brawl in which you do some old fashioned bare knuckle boxing would give each player more Hit Points due to the fact getting hit by a fist isn't as mortally wounding as getting gutted like a pig with a dagger or sword.

I'd like to add I resent the whole class X gets bonus Y, or stat A gives advantage B. Use common sense, I'd say. Where a rogue would dodge, a warrior would parry or block. So in my opinion, any roll bonus is bullshit  

[Nekrul]

Also at the same time I'd like to point out that this system could be used for more situations than just simply fights/duels.

At the moment, the in game duels only really works from an IC perspective if two players actually wish to stage a fight to the death, or a sparring duel. It doesn't leave much room for anything else., ie. arm wrestling, a challenge who can drink more booze before passing out, etc. The original idea was that these dice rolls aren't just limited to brawls and fights, but instead trying to incorporate a broader spectrum of activities where two characters might be in contest with each other.

[Gnash]

Good point.

[Claws]

Why not just play Dungeons and Dragons instead ?
Surely the whole point of RP is what you make it not some dice rolls.


JMOHO

[Gnash]

JMOHO? 

[Tirnak Lynxclaw]

JMOHO? 

Just My Own Honest Opinion, I reckon

[Claws]

JMOHO? 

Just My Own Honest Opinion, I reckon

Thanks.

My Bad thought all the younger ones used this sort of jargon.

[Gorewolf]

Used to roleplay like this when I first started wow, works pretty well. Did events too where you would have a DM of sorts setting up attacks and such then /rolling to see if we survive or not >>

[Gnash]

Another fun way of using a dieroll is by letting it decide for you what's going to happen. It can get you in some nice surprising situations.

I can remember this one time when a bunch of orcs were on a treasure hunt of some sort and I used a dieroll as a coinflip (1-2) 1= heads 2 = tails and let the coinflip decide which of the two directions we had in mind, we would eventually take.

Surprisingly enough, we actually finished second too