I am also not very pleased with the Star Wars and Warhammer games from FFG. The main reason is that for me the Warhammer Fantasy one played more like a board game with some RPG elements. There were soem reason for this lie not being able to have 2 fire mages on the table with onyl 1 starter set since the cards etc only support 1 or the problem that you have again powers which you exhaust. All in all it is to much like the D&D 4th edtion with some different dice for me and I really disliked the 4th edtion of D&D cause it was more a rescouce management than a RPG for me.

So I can understand why people disliek the systems.

AD&D 4th was more of an attempt at a tabletop MMO...

R&K has been perhaps the hardest dice system I've found in terms of getting my head around probabilities -- with the exception of things like the FFG Star Wars system, with all its non-numerical wonkiness. With its "dice for this, dice for that, and dice for another thing, the latter reminds me more of something like Deadlands, with its dice, cards, poker chips, and assorted stuff.

If it helps, you can go with the rule of thumb I've seen plenty people using: For every die rolled and kept, add 6 to the average result. For every die rolled beyond that, add 2 to the average result.

So a 4k3 would give you (by the rule of thumb) an average of 20. The actual average (by mathematical analysis) is about 21,91.

I use the "1k1 = 5, 1k0 = 2, numbers go out the window once you hit 8kx and above" for reliability, but Karyudo's method cuts closer to the truth. I just prefer a 65% to 70% success rate for a reliable roll.

Every game tries to be unique in many aspects which includes the choice of how you want to fiddle with chance.

suits, d4s, d6s, d10s, d20s, coins etc as well as the number or variety included in the rolls, flips or hands.

probabilities help adjust the difficulty of a game.

"The Goddess of Misfortune smiles upon you", your average probability of doing any task is now 30% (at least it isn't zero =p)

For some reason I still like 2nd Ed.

yeah. no. the symbols are NOT distinct,

You can't tell the difference between these symbols?

someone is obviously a fanboy...

i can tell the difference, but they are not distinct. these are two very different concepts. they're all vaguely spikey, vaguely circular. in a rapid glance, all i'm going to get out of looking at them is, and i know this from experience having run a year long star wars campaing and played in another, are there any doubles. numeric dice, on the other hand, having been trained our whole lives to recognize numbers, i can read and assess more or less the minute they hit the table. as nearly everyone can.

look dude, you CANNOT win this argument. numbers are easier to read that the gibberish on these dice. that doesn't mean they're bad, or the game is bad. but there is simply no POSSIBLE argument you can make that is going to change the fact that people read numbers quicker and easier than they do made up symbols.

Pretty much. I mean, heck, lots of people people can't distinguish car maker symbols, and they look at them everyday.

To add another wrinkle to the discussion, what if one were colorblind? Or just plain blind?

Well, blind people have trouble with normal dice as well.

PS: I know some dice can be decipherable by touch, but I couldn't pass this opportunity for à friendly jab

Well, blind people have trouble with normal dice as well.

One point that has not been discussed is that the FFG RPG system allows for multivalued results. Success/failure is only one axis of the result, you also have advantage/threat (in which I would include triumph and failure).

The Star Wars dice are set up to shade toward success with threat and failure with advantage. I characterize these as "Yes, but" and "No, but" results. However you could set the dice up to shade toward success with advantage and failure with threat, which I characterize as "Yes, and" and "No, and" results. Not sure which would be better for L5R, but it bears thinking.

You cannot mechanically do that with R&K.

yeah. no. the symbols are NOT distinct,

You can't tell the difference between these symbols?

One major flaw I see with this: Lose 1 die, need to buy it back since you need the full set and they aren't very common die neither. Normal RPG dice, you lose one, while it's not fun when you have a cool set (Like my Crab dice set), it's a common dice that you can get easily at any stores that sells RPGs. Most systems I play only need D10s, which is the L5R R&K and the Old World of Darkness (Mainly Vampire the Masquarade) which results that I have a tons of D10s so losing one isn't as bad and buying a new set means that I play with them on both systems.

It's being said a lot: Numeric dice are more user friendly. This also helps the game to grow up since it won't turn out new comers. I will admit that I saw the dice and simply say: "Heu... should I even bother?" Give my a D47 instead and it will feel less awkward... (The die doesn't exist and that's the point).

However let's keep in mind: Love a system, hate another but that's just a personal opinion.

To add another wrinkle to the discussion, what if one were colorblind? Or just plain blind?

In this specific case color-blinded is pretty good.

The lighter colors are the good dice and the darker colors are the bad dice.

Also the very common red-green blindness is addressed by having the two colors on different shapes.

As for a completely blind person. Programming a dice roller with sound out, should not take longer then a weekend.

This Warhammer Fantasy dice are actually quite annoying for red-green blind people because you have both colors on d10.

However to the topic of custom dice:

I really like fudge/fate dice. I also think hero quest dice are pretty cool.

But those two examples have empty sides, so you don't have much to process when you look at them.

The FFG dice are too cluttered for my taste, I never really get warm with them.

But I still think fortune and wind dice would be awesome for an L5R RPG.

@cparadis - I would actually disagree with your statement regarding "Yes, but..." and "No, but..." with R&K. Failure is still failure, yes, but you can have degrees of success with Raises. The difference is that in R&K, the player must declare the Raises before the roll, rather than reap the benefits after the roll.

That is one of the strengths of the R&K system. Higher risk, higher reward. You don't get more due to the accident of the dice. You have to plan it, predict it, then execute it. And then hope that the dice land in your favor.

Sndwurks. Interesting point. Since you set the stakes before with raises I still think that is just success, you just have higher stakes. But I see what you mean. I could see an argument that raises provide a "Yes, and" option in R&K. "Yes, you hit your opponent and you also knock her sword away." A very interesting point, not sure I agree necessarily, but I see where you are coming from.

Still no mechanical ways to pull off the other options that can lead to really interesting story telling.

Now this was just my own house rule when I ran first ed r&k in the 90's; I would let my players know their difficulty in terms like, "This is an routine/easy/average/difficult task." Then I would ask if they wished to add any raises. Success really made their faces light up, failure to meet the raised TN though did not mean a complete failure, they still succeeded at the base task as long as they achieved the original base TN. They just did not get the bonuses of their raises even if they beat the original TN by 6 points when they called for two raises. There are other ways to achieve varied results with any system it usually relies upon the story crafting skills of your gamemaster.

Shinjo Yosama

One point that has not been discussed is that the FFG RPG system allows for multivalued results. Success/failure is only one axis of the result, you also have advantage/threat (in which I would include triumph and failure).

The Star Wars dice are set up to shade toward success with threat and failure with advantage. I characterize these as "Yes, but" and "No, but" results. However you could set the dice up to shade toward success with advantage and failure with threat, which I characterize as "Yes, and" and "No, and" results. Not sure which would be better for L5R, but it bears thinking.

You cannot mechanically do that with R&K.

It's easily doable with R&K. In fact, I'm doing it in the games that I storytell.

Here's a template that I use that I changes depending what I wanna do:

Epic Fail : Roll < A = Usually a funny things or misleading information.

Failure: A <= Roll <= B = Usually a failure.

Normal Success: B <= Roll <= C = Action is successful and gets the normal results

Epic Success: Roll > C = Action is successful and beyond that results.

(Where A < B < C and represent TNs for each steps)

Does it requires more work for me, yes, but it's fun to do and my players really like this. Specially when they are investigating a room, there's an epic fail for the investigation roll and someone who did that roll gets a fully detailed description of a plant and plays like it's really important. You can also spice this even up, when you know that your players will not play this roll seriously by pre-rolling them and simply give the results without them knowing there was a roll in this investigation.

In the end, do you need a system when there's a based implementation of "Yes but" or "No but"? Nope, that's the job of the storyteller to spice up the results.

It's great that people are talking about their house rules, but that is a different discussion. Mechanically, there are no rules in L5R that address this issue. The fact you are house ruling the game actually proves that point that the system does not do it. Now, perhaps these rules should be introduced into a new edition of the game, or perhaps not. Maybe the genre does not need such a thing. But saying, "oh yeah here's my house rule that kind of sort of addresses this" isn't really responsive.

This isn't an attack on R&K or the people who enjoy it (of which I count myself one). But if we are going to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of FFG's dice pool rpgs we have to be honest that there are some things that they do better than R&K.

look dude, you CANNOT win this argument. numbers are easier to read that the gibberish on these dice. that doesn't mean they're bad, or the game is bad. but there is simply no POSSIBLE argument you can make that is going to change the fact that people read numbers quicker and easier than they do made up symbols.

This. I don't have to play to know that I have already learned numbers, and have not learned the special game-specific symbols; therefore the latter system requires me to learn and internalize something new. That can be a perfectly valid first-order judgment, before you get to how well play flows. The other objections people have raised here (including the one where you have to buy a new set of dice if you lose a single one) don't give me a very good impression, though.

cparadis -- you did originally phrase it as "you cannot mechanically do that with R&K." Which can be read as a statement that R&K is structurally incapable of accommodating that kind of nuance, instead of a statement on how the canonical implementation of R&K doesn't allow for it. House rules show that the former isn't true, but the latter is; I agree with you on that, and I do feel the lack. There's a reason why certain kinds of rolls in my game (most Investigation or Lore rolls) don't use Raises; instead I use a scaling threshold of success, and I have an additional rule that if you happen to triple your TN on a non-scalar roll, you get some minor improvement to your result. Similarly, going off the Fear rule, how badly you fail depends on how much you missed your TN by.

Kinzen, I agree, my phrasing may have been poorly chosen, sorry about that. Also, total Togashi Dynasty fanboy.

I remember my first gamemaster took me to a oage where the text read: These rules are only a suggestive guideline to help you enjoy this game. You are free to add to, subtract from, or modify these rules in anyway you see fit for your game. The first rule of any game is to have fun. I have yet to play any game that answers the myriad of nuances that occur during storytelling. I get so frustrated when gamemasters feel they are bound to the mechanics of a game's rules. Too often this squelches creativity, and dynamic meaningful encounters. Sometimes you have to say **** the mechanics, this will make better story! I am sure the symbol dice system has its advantages and quirks. My experiences with it though have been less than favourable. I will most likely stick with what I know. I still even enjoy running a game of first edition AD&D.

Storytelling and fun will trump mechanics in my opinion any given day.

I really wish FFG had an RPG forum. Good conversations like this will be lost in the LCG forum. I emailed them asking if they were going to open one up. Hopefully they will someday soon.

I really wish FFG had an RPG forum. Good conversations like this will be lost in the LCG forum. I emailed them asking if they were going to open one up. Hopefully they will someday soon.

I wouldn't bet on it anytime in the near future. They will not do something like that unless and until they are ready to state outright that they plan to do something with the RPG line. To do so beforehand would represent essentially a commitment that they intend to do so, which they wouldn't (rightly) want to make and mislead people if L5R RPG is not going to be something they want to take up.

I really wish FFG had an RPG forum. Good conversations like this will be lost in the LCG forum. I emailed them asking if they were going to open one up. Hopefully they will someday soon.

I wouldn't bet on it anytime in the near future. They will not do something like that unless and until they are ready to state outright that they plan to do something with the RPG line. To do so beforehand would represent essentially a commitment that they intend to do so, which they wouldn't (rightly) want to make and mislead people if L5R RPG is not going to be something they want to take up.

Even if they made it blatantly and abundantly clear that they were opening an RPG subforum only as an act of goodwill towards the broader L5R community?

Personally, I think the idea of opening up an L5R RPG subforum would be good just to keep the RPG related posts from getting cluttered up in here with the LCG posts.

But, like others, I would not expect much until more details on the sale get ironed out. It's been pretty much radio-silence from FFG on the entire L5R matter since the first initial tweets.

Regarding the RPG, though, this was promising:

https://twitter.com/FFGames/status/642432661257089024

I really wish FFG had an RPG forum. Good conversations like this will be lost in the LCG forum. I emailed them asking if they were going to open one up. Hopefully they will someday soon.

I wouldn't bet on it anytime in the near future. They will not do something like that unless and until they are ready to state outright that they plan to do something with the RPG line. To do so beforehand would represent essentially a commitment that they intend to do so, which they wouldn't (rightly) want to make and mislead people if L5R RPG is not going to be something they want to take up.

Even if they made it blatantly and abundantly clear that they were opening an RPG subforum only as an act of goodwill towards the broader L5R community?

Most likely. Right now there is no reason to do anything that could be interpreted as a commitment to anything by any party unless there was a serious, obvious necessity to do so. People interested in posting about RPG could simply tag their posts with [RPG], for example, so people could more easily find threads relating to RPG content.

It's better to allow the community to develop these things when there is so much uncertainty, than to wait for the company to act, when they've given no indication that they can or will at any future date.