[SG] Bell Curve, was Re: Oerjan Dreams

> >3) Tom Barclay suggested a solution here: let level-X armour roll

St Jon said:
> If I can jump in here (having watched the discussion with interest....

I was rolling 22 dice per NSL capital ship a few days ago, no problem.
Certainly gave a lot better feel than rolling 1d6 and multiplying by 22 would
have. I don't see why that wouldn't be the same in SG.

> >3) Tom Barclay suggested a solution here: let level-X armour roll

My worry is that it means that in some cases you could need five (or more!)
of EVERY die type per player, or else you'd be re-rolling  the same dice
and trying to remember the scores you rolled (or even worse, having to
write them down!) - something I tried really hard to avoid. In FT is is
a bit different because it's just a handful of D6, and everyone has loads of
them. If everyone agrees that it won't be a problem, however, I'll probably go
with it.

> > >3) Tom Barclay suggested a solution here: let level-X armour roll
I like the bell curve thing. I don't really have a problem rolling more dice,
quite frankly this is the way I've been doing it all along anyways. Maybe I'm
strange though, I also have been using more armor classes on my
vehicles,  class 2 d8, etc. 1/2 - 1 with anywhere from d6 to d12 armor,
etc.
:)

> My worry is that it means that in some cases you could need five (or

If you can find the various polyhedral dice, you can probably find five each.
I don't recall offhand how much they cost but it can't be that much (compared
to rules, minis, airbrush, terrain, etc etc). If you really want to commit all
of your fiscal endeavors toward minis and not
towards dice, you can just roll 1 and remember it--or if you can't
remember and add two numbers, you're probably looking for Games Orkshop
instead of GZG, n'est-ce pas?

On Fri, 10 Nov 2000 23:52:55 +0000, Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com>
wrote:

> My worry is that it means that in some cases you could need five (or

As I said earlier, it's not a problem. You currently really need at least 3 or
4 of every die anyway. I've seen cases of squads rolling 3 D8s (D8 support
weapon, 4 guys with firepower 2, Regular quality) and the opponent rolling a
D8 for range band. I bought even more dice because I find in convention games
that the dice tend to gravitate to one side of the table or the other. I like
having a fair number of dice around so no one has to reach too far.

Five of one type is no problem here.

> Jon T. wrote:

[snip]
> now, the main reason it wasn't used in SG in the first place is that
for an >>>armour-5 target. What does everyone else think about this?
> I was rolling 22 dice per NSL capital ship a few days ago, no

A complete set of SGII dice costs how much...?

And how many gamers do *not* have five or more of every die type already? <G>

Later,

> > >3) Tom Barclay suggested a solution here: let level-X armour roll

Yes, this is something we've been considering also - it allows the
simulation of different armour types using the different dice. I'm still not
sure I'm entirely happy about rolling that many dice per shot (in FMA
I'm prepared to live with it, since very large weapons and/or very heavy

<<snip stuff about needing lots of die for SG2 varients>>

I don't really know any gamers who aren't also die-collectors of various
sorts. With two or three people around a table, I've never had a problem
assembling as many of any sort of die as were needed. Let's see, I've got
(very roughly):

5d20 4 or 5d12 at least 10d10 6 or 8 d8 almost 80 d6 (two bricks of 36, plus
extras...) 4d4

My usual gaming partners have loads more, usually, and dice are cheap,
compared to miniatures or even rulebooks! Given the number of freakish
anti-vehicular shots I've seen in SG2 - the DFFG/5 Minor Impact that
bounces off Armour 1; or the more common Size 1 d12 Impact IAVR that
blasts an Armour 5 Heavy Tank to Hades with a fontal hit - I'd be in
favour of multiple die to even out the results curve.

> Brian Burger wrote:

Do you have any weird dice?

I've got a Zoccihedron 1d100, a few spherical dice, and some dice with strange
heiroglyphs on them.

I've seen (but do not own) some other odd ones.

I have a comment...

The idea of repeatedly rolling 1 (or more) dice to resolve a single situation
reminds me of a minor flaw in Avalon Hill's old Squad Leader game...

I liked it...very interesting game. Only one thing I didn't like...which
seemed to come up often in our games. Rolling multiple "Supressed" results on
the same unit after a single attack.

An example: Side A has one squad, with a heavy weapon in the upper story of a
building, positioned to fire down a road. And another squad positioned to fire
down the same road. Side B desides he has to move a squad across that road.
Ov-course
that moving unit comes under fire from both of Side A's units.
This situation could generate 2-4 supressed results (depending on how
the rolls
go).

Then Side B has to reroll for every supressed result. If there is more that
one squad in that hex, this gets to be a pain!

Why not just add a factor for each extra supressed result after the first, and
make a single roll. It is faster this way...

Donald Hosford

> Ground Zero Games wrote:

> >> >3) Tom Barclay suggested a solution here: let level-X armour roll