Ties
Posted by hamsterprophet on August 4, 2007
I just got really excited about my tie-breaking mechanic for a new game.
“Once the active player and the scene guide both have dice, they roll them and order them sequentially. Look at the highest single result for each person; if the active player is higher, then he “wins” the first volley, and he describes how his trait and actions get him closer to his goal. If the scene guide is higher, than the active player loses the first volley, and the scene guide describes what this means in the fiction. If they are a tie, both dice are returned to their owners and you look at the next highest pair. If all pairs are ties, then the contest is interrupted by something that means it will have to continue on later. This something can be declared by anyone at the table, and that person automatically claims the conflict (as it has become a discrete repeatable action).”
That’s right; ties mean that the conflict gets broken off before it’s resolved, and turns into a resource that someone can bring back at any time in order to influence a different conflict. That’s hella cool, no?
August 5, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Hey Nathan - it does sound really cool. Am I right in understanding that it will also be pretty rare - you need every pair of ordered dice to be equal, after all? If you dispensed with this, and just abandoned the conflict when the first pair are drawn, what would you be losing?
August 5, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Well, it’s rarer the more important the conflict is, importance measured by how many dice are being rolled. If one side is rolling 2 dice against 5 or 6, it’s a lot more likely they’ll tie on both of them than if both sides are rolling 6 dice.
I think abandoning the conflict on a single tie would be pretty lackluster. It’s pretty common to (say) both sides tie on a 5, but have the rest of their dice be mismatched if you’re rolling even 3 or 4 dice. Dice here being d6s, by the by.