Blades with d20s — workable compromise?

Blades with d20s — workable compromise?

Blades with d20s — workable compromise? Full explanation below, but the TL;DR: 11+ ~ 4+; 18+ ~ 6; 20 & 11+ ~ 6 & 6 (but 20 & 15+ is technically more accurate). Any advice or criticisms? http://anydice.com/program/cb6e

I’m planning to run Blades for my rotating-GM group when it’s my turn, and my group is very supportive of trying new games but also has expressed their preference for d20s after I roped them into a 2d6 system for my last turn.

I personally don’t have strong feelings about dice types generally aside from a preference not to have to do too much math at the table, but I find Blades’ dice system to be very elegant. I discussed it with them and came up with what I hope will be a very fruitful compromise so that my group can roll handfuls of those d20s they love so much, and the Blades mechanics are almost entirely unaffected.

Mapping successes with complications is simple — rolling an 11 or higher out of 20 is identical to rolling a 4 or higher out of 6.

Successes can be pretty close too, with an 18+/20 tracking very closely with 6/6.

Crits are a little tricky, but they’re actually pretty workable by requiring a 20 on one die and then at least one other success (11+). The probabilities are more accurate by requiring a 20 and a 15+, but I’m leaning toward the former since it avoids the odd-duck 15+ which is otherwise irrelevant.

What do you think — am I crazy? Is the increased crit probability a concern or worth it to keep the die-reads simpler? Any other suggestions or ideas would be much appreciated!

http://anydice.com/program/cb6e

9 thoughts on “Blades with d20s — workable compromise?”

  1. Oh and one more point in favor of the 20-and-11 crit — the probability changes actually help make up for slightly decreased full-success likelihoods. “Success with complications” is my favorite result though personally, so I’m not too broken up about it either way.

  2. Thanks for the suggestion! They’re really a great group, just don’t have much experience outside of various d20 systems yet. They were very supportive and creative and played a great campaign with a non-d20 system in my last go as GM, I’m just trying to be receptive to their feedback. TBH it’s more about how excited they seemed when I offered that maybe we could use d20-pools than it is that they were hating too much on d6s.

    This is pretty subjective, but I actually find it harder to recognize a potentially-unmatched pair of 18+ dice, and it’s a bit less probable than any of the other combinations. I also felt like my group would want 20s to “mean something” — I know rolling a 20 and a bunch of traitors will feel like a let down no matter what, but the likelihood of having rolled a crit once you’ve got one 20 is pretty good. With an 11+ it’s like needing a partial success with the remaining dice (50% with 2 dice, 75% with 3, 88% with 4 and so on).

    I’ve actually considered making custom d20s somehow (maybe stickers or something) — if I had THOSE, rolling a pair of full successes would definitely jump back to the top of the crit approaches.

  3. Note: Dice type isn’t the only feedback I’m responding to — just the only feedback that requires any mechanical changes to Blades. It was actually kind of magical reading through the rules and noticing how many of the things I wanted to adjust seemed to be handled elegantly already.

  4. I kinda get this, but I don’t think that it is actually about dice.

    If you want to do this go ahead, but if they are only used to D20 it is not the dice size that will get them.

    The difficulty will be how inherent fictional positioning is in the resolution of those rolls.

    They might interpret that as hating d6s but that isn’t what the issue is.

    However I get that doing what your players think will be easier might have a benefit.

  5. It is truly pretty much about dice size (shape most of all). They don’t have much reverence for D20 rules, and have been enthusiastic about experimenting with other systems, but they have a lot of little rituals and fondness around 20-sided die.

    The two biggest takeaways from them after my last campaign were that (a) the generic system was too generic, and (b) they’d love to be able to roll d20s. I think Blades is absolutely going to kill for that first request, and I think (… hope?) that the latter will work out just fine.

    That said, it sounds like you might have some past experience with trying to teach Blades to “D20” gamers — any advice, or hurdles to watch out for?

  6. I’m not that experienced, but I have been in games with issues, when people go from games like d&d to more fiction forward games, without being properly briefed on the differences.

    I think blades has a lot of good advice in the book.

    Just get your head around how resolution of action rolls works:

    You present the situation,

    They state what result they are trying to achieve and what action they use,

    You decide how risky that is and what the effect level is,

    negotiation occurs,

    a devils bargain might be offered,

    another pc may agree to assist,

    dice are rolled,

    you interpret the roll and present the new situation.

  7. The main thing is getting them on board with that kind of flow.

    There is quite a bit of flexibility in there as to when pcs get to add information about the situation, and that will be very group dependent.

    Everything else stems from that basic flow.

    (at the moment I have watched a tonne more BitD than I have played so take that for what it is)

  8. Thanks! Yeah we definitely had a little trouble with that flow in the last campaign, but I think the clarity/specificity of the way Blades encodes the negotiation will help a lot.

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