Cooperative Narrative Dice Pools
Last updated
Last updated
The dice pool procedure suggested here is a way to conduct group turns with a single dramatic roll. This suggestion works best at a physical table. People can make simultaneous rolls in a VTT, but it lacks the theatricality of rolling a fistful of dice, especially if done in a dice tower.
In order for these dice pools to work, you need to have different color dice for each player.
Each player chooses their color.
Each player gets an opaque red d20 for Panic, an opaque d100 set in their chosen color, 4d10 translucent, frosted, or pastel dice of their chosen color, and a d6 of their chosen color.
Roll 1d6 to replace 1d5. If a 6 is rolled, until you roll a 1-5.
The table/Warden gets a red d20 for rolling on the dynamic table. For creatures and NPCs, there are a black and a red set of dice that consist of a d100 set, 4d10 that are translucent/frosted/pastel shaded, and 1d6.
For advantage and disadvantage, there is one final orange set of dice that include a d100 set, 4d10 that are translucent/frosted/pastel, and 1d6.
Having color-coded dice allows you to roll for advantage and disadvantage simultaneously, and it allows you to roll for multiple players at the same time and easily differentiate the results. This is why there are two colors for creatures and a spare set of orange dice.
For this narrative dice pool system, everyone in a particular develops a plan for the next turn together. They decide together where each character is going to move and what they are going to attempt before any dice are rolled. As a group, you decide if each individual action even calls for a roll. You then gather together all of the color-coded dice for everyone’s rolls and drop them into the dice tower. This includes to-hit and damage rolls as well, just ignore the damage dice if there is not a hit.
You build a dice pool for encounters in the same way as you do for the players, using the . Since the AI is driving the rolls, it’s up to the players to interpret the results and determine what they mean for the party.
If a player takes an action with advantage or disadvantage, you can use the white/clear dice or the black/red creature dice if the white/clear dice are already being used in the pool. If one player is aiding another player to give them advantage instead of taking their own action, you just add their color-coded dice instead of the spare dice.
Once you have rolled the pool for an entire action group, you look at all of the dice together. You decide what it means to have a specific combination of critical successes, successes, failures, and critical failures.
What does it mean when one player fails while another players action was dependent on them? What does a critical mean in this situation?