Chasing that Target Number

So, I've established that I really, really like roll-and-keep dice pools for Nobody Poops on TV.

I've also established the idea of Techniques, which are a statistic that tracks how good of an actor you are, and which you use to inform how you perform your rolls. Not how well you roll, that's purely the wheelhouse of Talents, but the way in which you act.

More and more I think I can marry these two concepts by declaring that your Technique score determines how many dice you can keep from your rolls. It doesn't have a dice of its own, it's purely concerned with how many dice you're allowed to keep from your (potentially huge) dice pools. You roll, let's say 5d8, but you can only keep 2, because your Emotionality stat is a 2, regardless of how many Talents you use.

Now, you can decide which ones you keep and which you discard, but in doing so you're skewing the odds quite heavily.

Let's say you're rolling 2d8 and keep your 1 highest result (having 1 in your chosen Technique and 2 Talents). A roll of 8 is by far the most likely, appearing 23% of the time, or close to one in four times.

Let's call this our baseline. The lowest somebody is likely to roll, under ideal circumstances (any roll from 1d8 is equally likely across the board, so 1 Talent doesn't tell us anything useful).

Keeping 1 from a dice pool of any size gets us an 8 as the most likely result, but keeping 2 from a dice pool of 3 gets us a result of 12 approximately 13% of the time.

After this, let's look at the highest plausible dice pool: 5d8, the highest number of dice you can roll and still have a chance of earning a new Talent.

An 8 from this roll jumps to a nearly 50-50 chance!

Keeping 2 dice from 5d8 gets us...

14 is the most likely result from this pool, at 18%. Pretty close to our previous result, keeping 2 from 3d8! It seems like a range of 12-14 is pretty plausible, provided you keep 2 dice. The same is true when you keep 2 from a pool of 4d8; 13 and 14 are equally likely, at 15%.

So far we have a pretty good idea of our odds:

• Keep 1 from any pool, 8 is most likely.
• Keep 2 from any pool, 12-14 is most likely.

Keeping 3 gets us 16 and 17 in a pool of 4 at 10% of the time, and 18 and 19 at 11% of the time in pools of 5. Keeping 3 in a pool of 6 results in a 20, 13% of the time.

Keeping 4 in a pool of 5 gets us 20 at 8% of the time, and 22-25 at 9% of the time in a pool of 6. A roll of 30 happens 2% of the time.

Now, analysing rolls one-by-one in this way, though slow, teaches us two things: one, the numerical range that Techniques should be (low; so as to better utilise Talents, of which there are potentially many, but which are most likely to be in pools of about 5 to 6) and two, what our target numbers for rolls should be. In larger pools, rolls of over 20 have about a 10% chance (pretty close to a d20 roll, in fact).

The interesting thing about this is, let's say we use Attribute-based target numbers after all. An extremely high Attribute (let's say 18 to 25) is generally unlikely to be achieved unless you have the dice pool to back it up (requiring many Talents and a good Technique score), and a low Attribute is generally easy to exceed, provided you get at least an 8.

If we use our original method of two paired Attributes equalling 20, then you're being penalised for having high stats, since it's easier to exceed a low Attribute. You could use Applause to increase the value of your roll (using Applause as a +1 bonus per Applause used), but is that fun? You have an easier time succeeding if your target number is low, and you have to work harder to succeed if your target number is high.

This is kind of the opposite effect of how I envision Attributes working, as personality traits. You want a good personality, after all!

Even if we lower our Attributes, to, let's say, a maximum of 10, then it's the same issue. You will almost always succeed, but you're still much better off having stats in the 1-2 range.

And a roll-under system, using higher Attributes is no good either! Why would you use large pools if the goal is to succeed using as few Talents as possible? It's easier to roll under with a small pool!

Tl;dr:

High Attributes, Roll Over

• Hard to exceed without Applause
• Requires many Talents

Low Numbers, Roll Over

• Easy to exceed
• No need to use Talents
• Encourages players to use worst Attribute

High Numbers, Roll Under

• Easy to exceed in almost all cases
• Little challenge to be found

Low Numbers, Roll Under

• Hard to exceed
• Applause as a -1 modifier can bring high rolls down
• But why use Talents if they increase dice pool size?
• Encourages players to use their worst Attribute

What if We Fudge the Numbers?

Now, there is an idea I've been playing with that could fit a "high Attributes, roll over" system.

What if there's a minimum value that an Attribute can be? What if we use a 10-point scale (very Sims 1 and Sims 2) but state that you can't have an Attribute lower than 10? Then, we use a point-buy system to allow players to allocate their stats however they wish from that point. Let's put a hard limit of 25 personality points that they can allocate, just as The Sims 2 used.

We'll also remove the "must total 20" cap, and change it to a "must total 30" cap for each pair.

Since these Attributes are mirrored, we'll also say that you only have to adjust one side of the stat spread; whatever you place into, say "Sloppy" (to use a Sims example), the opposite will go into "Neat" to ensure that they equal 30 together. We could also say you get 50 points to spend, requiring players to actively assign the stats themselves. Or even 40, guaranteeing that you'll never get 15 in every stat!

Personality points, as they appeared in The Sims 2.

Doing this:

• Establishes 10 as the minimum in theory (but guarantees a 20 on the other side of the spread, making half of your rolls harder in exchange for having half your rolls being easy).
• Establishes an even spread of 15/15 as the ideal stat spread in practice, though you'll need at least 2 points in your Technique to have a chance at these rolls (we should make it so Techniques have a push-and-pull of values too, to ensure some Techniques are always lower).
• Using the above Sims 2 spread, you'd get:
• 15/15
• 15/15
• 13/17
• 18/12
• 14/16
• In a "Keep 1" roll (as in, having 1 point in your chosen Technique), you will likely fail without using Applause, being unlikely to get above an 8.
• In a "Keep 2" roll, you're likely to succeed on your lower stats (12-14).
• In a "Keep 3" roll, you're likely to succeed on your higher stats (16+).
• In a "Keep 4" roll, you're likely to succeed almost all the time.

This... could work!

But, how to encourage higher stats being utilized? Using your more extreme personality traits creates harder rolls. Now, this is something that I think has some basis in the way TV works. Focus groups and Nielsen ratings don't tend to favour TV shows that are too "weird".

Look at, for example, Community. Its meta-humour spoke to a very small, very die-hard audience of fans, but among general audiences, it didn't do that great. Its cast of loveable weirdoes simply weren't relatable enough to the vast number of people tuning in.

And that's an interesting way to look at our characters! What if you don't want to be too weird? What if being unrelatable makes your life harder? What if you need to mask your true persona, and only letting it out around people you trust and who get you?

What if, to succeed at life, you needed to de-whimsify yourself?

What if there's bonuses and penalties related to using your Weirdest Attribute and your most Relatable Attribute? Maybe using your weirdest Attribute could lead to bigger rewards?

Oh my god this is a game about my experiences as an autistic person, isn't it? That.............. works amazingly well for a game inspired by the life sim genre. What's more true to life than a game about navigating the labyrinth of social interaction?