"Die-drop" mechanics

[Evil Scientist]

"Die-drop" mechanics are what it says on the tin: you have a table printed out on a paper, you drop certain dice on it, and generate something based not just on the result of the dice, but also based on the POSITION of the dice on the paper.

It's an easy concept, but also kinda great? I like how it uses the physical / material side of the dice as a gaming accessory. Generally, a dice generates one result, if you factor in its position, you get, for example, two more variables (the x and y coordinates of the final location).

I see this mechanic doing rounds in the "old school renaissance" blogosphere; as it is heavily used in the award winning game Vornheim by Z. Smith. Here's a blog post with some examples of how this mechanic is used to generate content on the go: http://www.gnomestew.com/game-mastering ... eneration/

I've seen die-drops used for generating dungeon maps (lots of these examples), villages and scenario outlines (the best example is ). There's a . So the main emphasis is on quick-and-easy random content generation.



What do you think of this mechanic? What would you use it for?
Have you encountered it before? What games have you played that use this?
Can you build a game around it?

[Onix]

My players often have a hard time keeping their dice on the table, much less a piece of paper. The other issue I have with the idea is that the trajectory of the dice can be manipulated. Even if that's accounted for, there's a weird meta skill that alters game play.

I'm not all poo poo on the idea, I'm just not sure how much I'm willing to trust the mechanism. I could see it do some really cool things where direction is important, like sword fighting (Where are you swinging?), or a search party (where are the searchers going vs. their quarry).

I'm recently less interested in lists and tables. A dice position sheet is a kind of table, you just use it differently. I'm looking for ways to enhance a player's ability to build elements on their own.

This could be a nice tool for a weary GM to come up with some ideas, I'm just not sure where I would want to use it.

I have been playing with a kind of maze that a player would keep in front of them to test attacks and defense, and this might be an interesting way of interacting with said maze.

[Evil Scientist]

[Onix]

[Rob Lang]

I like this mechanic. I think the meta aspect of aiming for a square should be really made use of.

I think it would be great for magic systems. For example, each corner of the paper could represent a different element (earth, fire, water, air) and then numbers or icons in the squares. The player might aim for a fire spell but end up with an air one and they have to use their huge ingenuity to solve the problem with what they have.

I think it also works nicely for solo play. I had a bit of a fiddle for a system that would build up a world. I found pure-random too random, I found flow charts+random better but I think this could be great for the world generation of event generation.

[Nicephorus]

I had this mechanic as part of a game for Game Chef 2012. You could drop a die of various sizes over a sheet. If it stayed on the sheet, you could always use that value for the skill it landed on. The game had a competitive element as well so someone might try knock your die. The idea was to add the tension of physical skill to a simple game designed for one shots.

I played it a few times and it went ok. The game was hurt by the restricted word count but I never got around to revising it.

Here's the sheet to drop the dice on:


Here's the rest of the game.

[madunkieg]

Interesting, not only that it's a new rule, but that it has found traction with the OSR crowd. They're normally very resistant to new rules ideas.

Relying on the player's skill to put the die in a certain place has indie design written all over it. I'm not surprised that it was used in a Game Chef entry. I'll have to try it out for myself. Thanks for the link to your game!

[Evil Scientist]