It’s been a while since the last time (part I and part II). Besides dice pools and linear RNGs, a common way to get a random number is to roll a few dice and sum their results. This results in a curved distribution where some results are more probable than others. For example, rolling 3d6, you can only get result 3 by getting three ones but there are multiple ways of adding to e.g. 7 using numbers between 1 and 6. Continue reading “Dice Math III – Summing dice”
Dice math, part 1 of N
Most RPGs feature at least some mechanics with uncertainty and from both the designer and player perspective, it is important to know what you get out of them. Often their properties are intuitively clear, but I thought it’d be fun to go through them in more detail than usually happens in a gaming session. Even though pieces like this might be available somewhere, I wanted to go through the math and simulations myself. This is part 1 of N of series where I’ll go through the properties of different mechanics. I’ll start with a staple: A linear random number generator (RNG, usually a die / dice). The most popular example of this is probably D&D and it’s spawn (eg pathfinder).