“A combat system where two dice determine the hit zone and the single die determines the damage inflicted?”
Or the agent rolls 3 dice — one is the damage to the patient, and the (zero or positive) difference between the other two is the damage to the agent. Say I roll 6, 5 , and 1 — I might choose to do 6 damage to the patient and 5 - 1 = 4 to myself, or I might do 1 to the patient and 6 - 5 = 1 to myself. You get the idea.
You can ditch the subtraction (if that is the mathy bit) and still keep some of the hard choices. Arrange the dice from highest to lowest. You can pick the highest and the middle die or the middle and the lowest die (but not the highest and the lowest — yes, I know: doubles and trebles). One damages the agent; one damages the patient; it is the agent’s choice, when the two dice chosen show different numbers.
The revised version always does some damage to the agent — doubles are no longer ‘free hits’ — and which rolls can be considered good is quite different. Consider rolling three sixes: on the subtractive system, the patient takes 6 damage and the agent takes none; on the revised system, both take 6 damage.
Each system will sometimes deliver a drop-the-enemy-now vs. minimize-damage-to-myself choice. (In a bring-’em-back-alive scenario, the agent will sometimes choose to take more damage than she dishes out. Ouch!)
Is there less cognitive overhead in the no subtraction version? I am not sure. Of course, if the agent is always sure about her priorities, she will learn to pick quickly, but then the fun will have gone! The player needs to be serving two masters and unsure which to favour. ;)
Great post as always! I’ve been following for a while, but first time commenting.
This simplicity of arranging dice reminded me of The Great Races by Sid Sackson, where everyone rolls 4 dice simultaneously and secretly groups them into 2 pairs, to move their horses along the 2–12 tracks. It’s just the right amount of agency in such a luck-driven, simple game.
Thank you for your comment! That sounds like a really good example of a similar mechanism. I've never played it, but Sid Sackson is a legend. So I'll need to check it out.
fascinating article! thank you for sharing about this :) i love quirky dice mechanics, and this certainly seems like an interesting one ^^ splitting the dice into groups of not the same number seems really ripe for increasing the number of different choices one could make :)
i also couldn't resist digging into the translation of the title, and found some really interesting stuff! and while i have studied a good amount of japanese, i will put a disclaimer that i am no expert, and am basing a lot of this on the translations of parts of the word i get by the (great) "10ten reader" browser plugin for Firefox, as well as my own understandings of the individual kanji.
so 天下 uses the kanji for "heaven" and "below", so a very literal translation would be "below the heavens" – which very naturally translates metaphorically to the 1st translation of the word, as "the whole world". other noun meanings are "the whole country" (similarly), society/the public (also makes sense), supremacy over a nation/government of a country/the ruling power (interesting given the theme of battles for supremacy!), and "having one's own way/doing as one pleases" (i guess along the lines of, having the world at one's feet).
now, it can also be used as an adjective, which is interesting even if it's not used that way for the game title – translating to peerless/incomparative/superlative/world-famous; which also is fairly similar: like, known throughout everywhere below the heavens. but also, you're striving to becoming peerless, by defeating possible peers.
finally though, there is an archaic noun translation as well – for "shogun", used in the Edo period; which just about comes after the Sengoku period, and depending on how you count when the period ends... you could see it as that the game is about trying to become the first Edo-era shogun.
then, 鳴動 i don't have as much to say about; the individual kanji mean roughly "chirp/ring/sound" and "movement", together meaning a rumbling, or a (ringing) cadence; either a large sound, or a more 'felt' rumbling in the ground.
so... the original title most certainly has a LOT of possible multifaceted meanings, that probably any one translation is likely to miss out on. you could really have anything from "world resonance" to "the heralding of the shogun", from "rumblings of society" to "the cadence of supremacy"/"supreme cadence", just to name a few...
In RPGs:
“A combat system where two dice determine the hit zone and the single die determines the damage inflicted?”
Or the agent rolls 3 dice — one is the damage to the patient, and the (zero or positive) difference between the other two is the damage to the agent. Say I roll 6, 5 , and 1 — I might choose to do 6 damage to the patient and 5 - 1 = 4 to myself, or I might do 1 to the patient and 6 - 5 = 1 to myself. You get the idea.
And of course, the Bakers’ Otherkind dice:
http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/759
http://www.lumpley.com/archive/148.html
https://lumpley.games/2022/03/14/otherkind-dice/
A little more mathy, but very interesting! Thanks!
“more mathy”
You can ditch the subtraction (if that is the mathy bit) and still keep some of the hard choices. Arrange the dice from highest to lowest. You can pick the highest and the middle die or the middle and the lowest die (but not the highest and the lowest — yes, I know: doubles and trebles). One damages the agent; one damages the patient; it is the agent’s choice, when the two dice chosen show different numbers.
The revised version always does some damage to the agent — doubles are no longer ‘free hits’ — and which rolls can be considered good is quite different. Consider rolling three sixes: on the subtractive system, the patient takes 6 damage and the agent takes none; on the revised system, both take 6 damage.
Each system will sometimes deliver a drop-the-enemy-now vs. minimize-damage-to-myself choice. (In a bring-’em-back-alive scenario, the agent will sometimes choose to take more damage than she dishes out. Ouch!)
Is there less cognitive overhead in the no subtraction version? I am not sure. Of course, if the agent is always sure about her priorities, she will learn to pick quickly, but then the fun will have gone! The player needs to be serving two masters and unsure which to favour. ;)
Great post as always! I’ve been following for a while, but first time commenting.
This simplicity of arranging dice reminded me of The Great Races by Sid Sackson, where everyone rolls 4 dice simultaneously and secretly groups them into 2 pairs, to move their horses along the 2–12 tracks. It’s just the right amount of agency in such a luck-driven, simple game.
Thank you for your comment! That sounds like a really good example of a similar mechanism. I've never played it, but Sid Sackson is a legend. So I'll need to check it out.
fascinating article! thank you for sharing about this :) i love quirky dice mechanics, and this certainly seems like an interesting one ^^ splitting the dice into groups of not the same number seems really ripe for increasing the number of different choices one could make :)
i also couldn't resist digging into the translation of the title, and found some really interesting stuff! and while i have studied a good amount of japanese, i will put a disclaimer that i am no expert, and am basing a lot of this on the translations of parts of the word i get by the (great) "10ten reader" browser plugin for Firefox, as well as my own understandings of the individual kanji.
so 天下 uses the kanji for "heaven" and "below", so a very literal translation would be "below the heavens" – which very naturally translates metaphorically to the 1st translation of the word, as "the whole world". other noun meanings are "the whole country" (similarly), society/the public (also makes sense), supremacy over a nation/government of a country/the ruling power (interesting given the theme of battles for supremacy!), and "having one's own way/doing as one pleases" (i guess along the lines of, having the world at one's feet).
now, it can also be used as an adjective, which is interesting even if it's not used that way for the game title – translating to peerless/incomparative/superlative/world-famous; which also is fairly similar: like, known throughout everywhere below the heavens. but also, you're striving to becoming peerless, by defeating possible peers.
finally though, there is an archaic noun translation as well – for "shogun", used in the Edo period; which just about comes after the Sengoku period, and depending on how you count when the period ends... you could see it as that the game is about trying to become the first Edo-era shogun.
then, 鳴動 i don't have as much to say about; the individual kanji mean roughly "chirp/ring/sound" and "movement", together meaning a rumbling, or a (ringing) cadence; either a large sound, or a more 'felt' rumbling in the ground.
so... the original title most certainly has a LOT of possible multifaceted meanings, that probably any one translation is likely to miss out on. you could really have anything from "world resonance" to "the heralding of the shogun", from "rumblings of society" to "the cadence of supremacy"/"supreme cadence", just to name a few...
fun to think about, for sure :)