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The Answer to Life, The Universe, and Tabletop Dice Luck
By Ravenhawk | October 3, 2007
I was doing the ol’ “Read random old blog posts in cool sounding blogs” thing today and came upon this post titled, Blessing of the Dice Gods. In it, the author notes the effects upon players when cool dice rolls happen at cool times.
In the tabletop game I’m currently involved in, the GM made an interesting house rule. I’d thought it was a normal house rule for him, but apparrently he just made it up for our campaign. His system is a D100 based system. Obviously, therefore extreme action comes down upon a roll of 1 or 100.
Added to this is the random factor of the 42 roll. When one rolls a 42, crazy stuff happens. What exactly the 42 means can vary greatly. A minor roll ending in a 42 could make the players run across a random villager, running as though for his life, screaming, who suddenly stops and calmly walks away, ignoring the existance of the party.
A dodge roll on the 42 can make you get hit in a dramatic, hardcore fashion, or perhaps the arrow flying at you suddenly turns into a bowl of petunias. (That one actually happened.)
The edition of the random 42 has added a good emotion wrench to our tabletop games. When someone rolls a 42, generally there are groans all around the table, looks of horror on the faces of the players and a grin of sadistic glee spreading across the face of our game master. 42’s aren’t always bad, but they’re not always good either, sometimes they can spell player death or a random large baddie encounter.
When the dice luck happens at good times, it can really bring good emotional effects to your players. By having another number which entails extremes of dice luck, you add one more point which can bring that rush of exhillaration/horror to the group.
If you’re not a Douglas Adams fan, you could substitute 42 for another number. Having it be somewhere in the middle is probably best as it creates a polarized effect for the dice luck. If you like having random effects in your system, it’s a fun rule to add.
Tags: Tabletop Games, Game Design, 42, D038D, D100, Dice Luck, Dungeons and Dragons, Games, House Rules, Role Playing Games, RPG
Topics: Tabletop Games, Game Design |