Alternate dice mechanics/question about scale

[wuxiasnake]

Woot just got my hardcopy!

16 days exactly from order at rpgnow to delivery here in sleepy old New Zealand. Stoked! I was expecting to wait up to 6 weeks.

Just been giving the book the proper once over and I'm pretty impressed.
The only thing I may bemoan is the randomness of the dice mechanic. Having been sold on the bell curve model for awhile now, the randomness of the dice pool mechanic (an issue evident in all dice pools, IMO) may take some getting used too.

IMO, again, this randomness seems to fit well with the anime style and cinematic games in general.

The thing is, I really like the design philisopy that has gone into OVA. Clay's philisophys are really in line with what I've come to enjoy recently ... after playing D&D since 1990 with the old red box. I.E. the key thing being the characters, the characters being defined by what they CAN do as opposed to what they CANT do, etc.

At some stage though I may want to run a more "realistic" game. Currently there are only 2 systems that I will GM - OVA and FATE. I like OVA better because FATE is in many ways like its parent, FUDGE, and may other "generic" systems e.g. BESM, GURPS, and HERO et al. It is a game designers kit, you can build a system off of the base to handle any genre. The key point there being YOU HAVE TO BUILD THE SYSTEM.

Anyway to cut to the chase - if I wanted to convert OVA to a bell curve mechanic - does anyone have suggestions?

I was thinking of going to a straight out 2d6 vs the attribute rating +/- a modifer depending on the difficulty of the task.

I just wanted to see if anyone else had some suggestions.

I'm also intested in how to handle scale. I know the rules are going to be included in OVA Mecha, but it still seems like that particular release is still a whiles off.

I've been thinking about trying something d20ish where each difference in scale results in a die roll modifer. e.g. fighting something twice your size incurs a - penalty to damage. I've been looking at that or allowing beings with a size advantage some sort of "virtual armour" - the extra size allowing an armour bonus. I'm also thinking perhaps that any penalty to damage dice for being of smaller scale should be tempered by a bonus to attack or defence rolls to reflect the fact that being smaller gives you a manouverability bonus.

Again I'd appreciate any input that can be offered.

[Siroh]

I'd probably keep the die rolling mechanic the way it is, and maybe allow characters in a grim n gritty game to trade in extra dice for a reduction in difficulty. Do you have Agile +3 and Hobby: Thievery +2, you can trade in 2 dice out of your total of 7 to lower the difficulty by 2. It doesn't work for combat (so let me get this straight, you're trading in 4 dice on your defense to give me a -4 modifier to hit you?) but it should make skilled folk accomplish things on a more regular basis.

Although anybody hyper-competent is already getting a good deal, on 9d6 it was extremely likely for a character to succeed on a Difficulty 10 roll every single time. Unless you're worried about characters who are experts failing on occasion I doubt you need to change the mechanic to begin with.

[Siroh]

Oh and I should add, I wouldn't make OVA into a roll-under system. I love OVA partially because it isn't BESM. Don't get me wrong, I love BESM too, but none of my local players will play BESM simply because of the roll-under and abstract crunch. If you're going to convert to a 2d6+attribute levels and mods system, I'd keep the difficulties similar maybe add 5 or 10 to all of them (depending on how often you want to see success), but I wouldn't predicate success purely on their own attributes.

[Clay]

I believe using a simple addition mechanic has been brought up before...you may want to try searching previous posts for this sort of thing.

In the end though, the dice mechanic isn't terribly random. Perhaps a bit wider than your typical bell curve...but the probability of getting exceedingly high values tends to drop sharply for unskilled characters. The mechanic always works like that, as far as I can tell...the more dice you have, the higher range you can get with regularity, but after that point, the odds drop sharply. It's a curve I like, but I guess it's not everyone's cup of tea.

It shouldn't be too hard to change the game though. I'd go for 3d6, which is one of the best bell curves IMHO. Maybe make Abilities and Weaknesses add and subtract +2/-2.

You'll have to tinker with the difficulty chart, but 3d6 is such a rampant mechanic you can likely compare it to other RPGs.

[wuxiasnake]

Think I've been jumping the gun again by the looks of it. Gonna have to test the existing mechanics before crying, heh.