Malifaux/TTB with dice?

[maneeper]

I know the cards are a great part of the game, but some people are turned off by it, and I really want to get them into TTB. Does anyone have an idea of how we can convert to dice for at least TTB?  I was thinking just 2 d6, with critical 1s being black joker and critical 6s being red.  We could use some tokens for card suits.  

 

Does anyone have an idea or have you seen a idea about that?  Could it work similarly?

[Flinroz]

Mathematically I think a d12 would give a closer spread to the fate deck. Even odds across 12 numbers, verses the deck is mostly even across 12 numbers, with 2 jokers. Maybe flip a coin on 1 and 12? A 2d6 would be a bell curve of mostly middle numbers.

 

Not huge on the idea of course, but this is assuming you absolutely need to get away from cards.

[WolfDayDream]

Um... It... Kinda defeats the entire concept of the game.

[solkan]

9 hours ago, maneeper said:

I know the cards are a great part of the game, but some people are turned off by it, and I really want to get them into TTB. Does anyone have an idea of how we can convert to dice for at least TTB?  I was thinking just 2 d6, with critical 1s being black joker and critical 6s being red.  We could use some tokens for card suits.  

 

Does anyone have an idea or have you seen a idea about that?  Could it work similarly?

This seems to be an exercise in missing the point of the game, sort of like playing Werewolf with your eyes open or the cards face up.

The value of a card suit run from 1 (ace) to 13 (king), with four suits.  (The two jokers push the value range to 0 through 14).  That's not going to translate to six sided dice easily.  You'll also need the four suits for the trigger mechanism.  And all of the stats in the game are worked out based on that 0 to 14 in four suit value range.

One of the other functions of the cards is to be a convenient form of "stored rolls" for the players.  And they're also the central mechanic to the game.  If you replace flipping a card with rolling a die, you have to come up with a substitute for cheating the card flip.  That's simple enough, but for the mechanics of "player draws a card and adds it to their hand".

So, to be blunt, if the cards are a problem, you're looking at having to redo the core mechanic of the game, and redo all of the attribute values in the game.  You'd have less work and an easier time just getting a copy of GURPS and just using the Malifaux background for the campaign.

Short version: If you're in a "No cards" zone, find a different game system to use.

 

[Four_N_Six]

I suppose if you have to, you could use d4 for suits, and just assign each suit to a number.  If you go on the d12s for normal flips, you'd essentially have to have each player with multiple d12 and d4 to generate a "hand" to cheat with at the start of the round, which will get messy, complicated, and probably take a long time (6 different rolls each to ensure the number and suit stay together).

I understand some people don't like the cards, but those people are wrong.  I started playing Malifaux almost 2 years ago, and as soon as I did I decided I instantly hate dice.  Can't stand playing Pathfinder anymore, I just want a deck of cards.

[WolfDayDream]

Frankly whatever you wanna do but I think translating this to 'dice' would be as complicated as reinventing the entire game.

[Franchute]

This is heresy 

[-Loki-]

The issue with using dice instead of cards isn't even in the stored 'rolls' of your hand or trigger suits - the basic premise of a deck means something can only be flipped once. With dice they can be rolled as long as it lands on that side.

For example, if you're hoping for a 13 of masks to get that massive hit off, but flip that 13 of masks for a healing flip instead before that model is activated, well, you can't flip it again and have to rely on a different flip. Or if it's in your hand, you might suffer a large hit before you activate that model and you really need to use it for a cheated Df flip to not lose a key model.

There's really no way to replace the deck mechanic with dice and some up with a balanced solution. My main question to them would be why are they so heavily against trying something new? I wasn't entirely sold on the idea of using a deck until I tried it. It's a fun mechanic. It's not for every game, but Malifaux and TTB (and the upcoming The Other Side) are built around it.

[Ergonomic Cat]

On 2/18/2017 at 0:45 AM, solkan said:

This seems to be an exercise in missing the point of the game, sort of like playing Werewolf with your eyes open or the cards face up.

The value of a card suit run from 1 (ace) to 13 (king), with four suits.  (The two jokers push the value range to 0 through 14).  That's not going to translate to six sided dice easily.  You'll also need the four suits for the trigger mechanism.  And all of the stats in the game are worked out based on that 0 to 14 in four suit value range.

One of the other functions of the cards is to be a convenient form of "stored rolls" for the players.  And they're also the central mechanic to the game.  If you replace flipping a card with rolling a die, you have to come up with a substitute for cheating the card flip.  That's simple enough, but for the mechanics of "player draws a card and adds it to their hand".

So, to be blunt, if the cards are a problem, you're looking at having to redo the core mechanic of the game, and redo all of the attribute values in the game.  You'd have less work and an easier time just getting a copy of GURPS and just using the Malifaux background for the campaign.

Short version: If you're in a "No cards" zone, find a different game system to use.

 

This is really the best advice.  Cards are the key component to the TTB system.  You can't really extract it.  But TTB is not core to Malifaux.  You could easily pick up GURPs and create powers.  It would be easier than trying to rejigger the game to use dice.

[Gnomezilla]

I'd have the players use their d12s not 2d6s, let them simmer a bit over being incapable of getting 13s while you still can (but that is the price they pay for making their fatemaster do unnecesssary conversion work to the system--make that explicit), and when their rolls get good in a moment of suspense cheat in a better card to beat it from your hand--and then once again offer to switch the game from dice back to cards so that they all may influence a critical moment like that. If that demonstration of the control cards can give doesn't intrigue them, I would...worry.

The above is moot if someone actually owns the deck-mimicking specialty dice and just wants to use them for once. It still wrecks the mechanics but there's no malicious intent in wanting to use your shinies.

[koronuslight]

Devil's Advocate Moment (because bored at work):

The only way to simulate a 54 card fate deck is to use two d10's as separate values - 1/1, 1/2, 1/3 and so on - for a total of 55 possible combinations. 

Then you need to assign each possible combination a value and suit based on the deck, with 1/1 and 9/9 being jokers, and 0/0 being rerolled. 

Then you need to have a sheet of paper with each corresponding combination and a check box next to it, so as each combination of dice is used, it is crossed off. 

The problem you'll eventually run into will be when you start running out of combinations that have already been used, and subsequent rerolls occur, you will find yourself rerolling more and more until you finally get the next value. 

[Ergonomic Cat]

14 minutes ago, koronuslight said:

Devil's Advocate Moment (because bored at work):

The only way to simulate a 54 card fate deck is to use two d10's as separate values - 1/1, 1/2, 1/3 and so on - for a total of 55 possible combinations. 

Then you need to assign each possible combination a value and suit based on the deck, with 1/1 and 9/9 being jokers, and 0/0 being rerolled. 

Then you need to have a sheet of paper with each corresponding combination and a check box next to it, so as each combination of dice is used, it is crossed off. 

The problem you'll eventually run into will be when you start running out of combinations that have already been used, and subsequent rerolls occur, you will find yourself rerolling more and more until you finally get the next value. 

I'm assuming that their issue is not literally with the fact that they have to have rectangular pieces of paper in their hands as opposed to square pieces of plastic. I'm assuming that their issue is if they don't like the idea of fliping cards from a deck because they want the probability distribution of dice and the ability to repeat numbers, rather than having them only happen once every 54 cards.  And and also, probably, because they're familiar with dice and how they roll and cards are somehow mysterious to them.

If you wanted to do a quick and dirty solution, you could really just replace every positive flip with something like plus three to the role and every negative flip with -3 to the roll. It wouldn't be an accurate representation of what we're trying to get across in malifaux, because then you could never have a great success on a double negative, but it would be a fast way to make things work. Dissimulate the control hand, you probably have to grab some fate Dice, and have them roll some number of Fate dice every time they would normally draw cards. Then they can distribute those pluses and minuses to their results as they want, and only get to reroll all of the dice at times when they would normally be able to shuffle and redraw.

And then basically just disregard anything else that has to do with card manipulation that's not relevant.

[Adran]

15 hours ago, koronuslight said:

Devil's Advocate Moment (because bored at work):

The only way to simulate a 54 card fate deck is to use two d10's as separate values - 1/1, 1/2, 1/3 and so on - for a total of 55 possible combinations. 

Then you need to assign each possible combination a value and suit based on the deck, with 1/1 and 9/9 being jokers, and 0/0 being rerolled. 

Then you need to have a sheet of paper with each corresponding combination and a check box next to it, so as each combination of dice is used, it is crossed off. 

The problem you'll eventually run into will be when you start running out of combinations that have already been used, and subsequent rerolls occur, you will find yourself rerolling more and more until you finally get the next value. 

Surely 2 D10s provides 100 possible combinations. A D6 and a D10 would provide 60 combinations, so you would only have to discard 6 results (You could choose to automatically discard all results where the D10 has rolled a 0 and then have 54 combinations). 

A D12 and a D4 is the quick and easy cheat to get you close, you lose the 13s and the Jokers, so critical failures and successes. 

Overall whilst you could use a dice as a different random number generator, and you could have similar things to simulate positive and negative flips, its really hard to replicate the ability to cheat fate, which is a pretty fundamental part of the background to the game where you are playing people who are able to cheat what Fate has set for them. 

 

[koronuslight]

1 hour ago, Adran said:

Surely 2 D10s provides 100 possible combinations. A D6 and a D10 would provide 60 combinations, so you would only have to discard 6 results (You could choose to automatically discard all results where the D10 has rolled a 0 and then have 54 combinations). 

A D12 and a D4 is the quick and easy cheat to get you close, you lose the 13s and the Jokers, so critical failures and successes. 

Overall whilst you could use a dice as a different random number generator, and you could have similar things to simulate positive and negative flips, its really hard to replicate the ability to cheat fate, which is a pretty fundamental part of the background to the game where you are playing people who are able to cheat what Fate has set for them. 

 

Nah, I actually sat here in Notepad and did the number of unique combinations. 1/2 and 2/1 are the same thing, so you only count it once. You start with 1/1 through 1/0, then 2/2 through 2/0, the sets get smaller each time. 

[Adran]

Just now, koronuslight said:

Nah, I actually sat here in Notepad and did the number of unique combinations. 1/2 and 2/1 are the same thing, so you only count it once. You start with 1/1 through 1/0, then 2/2 through 2/0, the sets get smaller each time. 

If you are counting 1,2 and 2,1 as the same number, then you are getting some numbers occurring more often than others, (there are 2 ways to get 1,2 in your rules so it happens 2% of the time, but only 1 way to get 1,1 so it only happens 1% of the time) so not an even distribution as you would get in a deck of cards. 

[Dogmantra]

23 hours ago, Ergonomic Cat said:

If you wanted to do a quick and dirty solution, you could really just replace every positive flip with something like plus three to the role and every negative flip with -3 to the roll. It wouldn't be an accurate representation of what we're trying to get across in malifaux, because then you could never have a great success on a double negative, but it would be a fast way to make things work.

Surely you would just roll multiple times and pick the highest/lowest/jokeriest however that is determined. Like Advantage and Disadvantage in 5e D&D.

[tomjoad]

I would, if my group absolutely refused to play the game the way it was designed, but also insisted on a world with similar flavor, look at Ravenloft from D&D or some other game that includes the themes that appeal to them. Without the cards, the whole game needs to be redesigned.

[Ergonomic Cat]

2 hours ago, Dogmantra said:

Surely you would just roll multiple times and pick the highest/lowest/jokeriest however that is determined. Like Advantage and Disadvantage in 5e D&D.

 I never actually got around to playing fifth edition, but that seems like a really good idea. Every extra flip is another set of dice, if it's a negative flip you choose the lowest result if it's a positive flip you choose the highest. You're still losing out on suits, so you'll have to figure out something about triggers. But it does a reasonable job of representing flipping multiple cards