Campaign Forum Dice Rolling Beta: Information and Feedback Post

Kallak

Hey Obsidian Portal Community,

I'm re-posting the material regarding the beta release campaign forum dice rolling here so that it's easier to access; but also so that we have a space for user feedback and discussion. So please feel free to give it a whirl, try it out, give us suggestions, feedback, ideas, criticisms, whatever the case may be.

What are you talking about again?

As something of a new trial stage in our development process, we’ve released a beta version of a new feature for the Ascendant users out there (particularly play-by-post folks I’d imagine). This feature is live right now, and we invite everyone to try it out and give us your feedback. The feature: dice rolls in campaign forum posts of course! These rolls are saved to the post, have unique IDs, and cannot be changed or deleted by the players. There are also fudge options for the GM!

(wow, Thallos might just be in trouble there…) So how does it all work? As seen in the image, there’s a basic format to the rolls with the beginning of the roll being [dice] and the end of the roll being [end-dice]. The full syntax looks like this:

[dice]#d(type)(+- unlimited-modifiers),min=(fudge-roll-up-to),max=(fudge-roll-down-to)[end-dice]

That said, here are a few examples:

• [dice]3d6[end-dice]


• [dice]1d20[end-dice]


• [dice]1d20+3[end-dice]


• [dice]1d20+3-1-1[end-dice]


• [dice]3dF[end-dice]


• [dice]3dF+1-2[end-dice]


• [dice]1d20+3,min=20[end-dice]


• [dice]1d20,max=5[end-dice]


• [dice]1d20,min=10,max=15[end-dice]

The basic functionality for the rules regarding the rolls operates as follows:

• You cannot copy/paste a roll to a different  post, it will be deleted on Save.


• You cannot copy/paste a roll multiple times in the same post, all but one will be deleted on Save.


• You cannot delete rolls from a post that has already been Saved. They will be re-added at the end of the post with a message indicating that they cannot be deleted. This will occur on Save.


• Only the GM and Co-GM(s) can fudge a roll. Any ‘min=’ or ‘max=’ entries to dice rolls made by players will be ignored on Save.


• If a post has one or more dice rolls in it and has already been Saved, then only the GM or Co-GM(s) can delete it. Players attempting to delete such a post will be shown an alert indicating that the presence of rolls requires the GM/Co-GM(s) to delete.


• If a fudge entry makes a roll impossible (ie, 3d20, max 2), the post preview will tell the GM/Co-GM. Should they save anyway (or not check the preview), the impossible roll will be replaced with an “ERR” entry.


• Rolls with incorrect format will not be rolled, but will display an “ERR” entry.


• Particulars of an “ERR” entry can be seen by re-editing the post and hovering the mouse over the message in the post preview.

Again, please note that this feature is still in the “beta” phase, and we encourage users to report any bugs they may encounter; as well as any updates they’d like to see, or other feedback they may have. This is your chance to impact not only the development of a feature on Obsidian Portal, but to impact the way in which features are developed!

twiggyleaf

We play Table Top and use real dice so I do not use the Dice Roller, but I am glad it is a feature.  

Ohiogould

This is fantastic as we often cover things in the forums between session that benefit from dice roll!

Mardey

Hey, I've just read the rules to use the dice roll and I noticed it's not very friendly for success counting, maybe there could be a fudge "type" that never ignores a 1 roll?

Something on the lines of success=(fudge-roll-up-to-unless-1)?

Kallak

@Mardey, ooh, interesting point. Thanks for bringing this up. I'll take to dev side.

DMaaron

Is there a formula for rolling different die types to achieve one sum? 

Example: Nightwing rolls damage for throwing his projectile disc thing. He needs to roll 1d10 for his strength, 1d6 for the weapon, and gets a +2 because of some extra mechanical benefit. The sum is his damage.

gastoff

@DMaaron

There isn't a way to combine the rolls into a single damage value with the current dice roller, but you can chain multiple instances of a rice roll together to achieve the same effect. For example:

Attack Roll: [dice]1d20+5[end-dice]  (1d20+5)

Damage: [dice]2d6+5[end-dice] + [dice]1d6[end-dice] acid  (2d6+5 +1d6 acid)

will display as:

Llywelyn

Is there an easy way to roll the same roll multiple times? For instance, in Cyberpunk 2020, automatic fire damage is rolled per bullet that impacted the target. Here is a combat roll example. 

-Bob empties his Arisaka SMG mag at the crazed booster gang member. Bob has a chance to hit the gang member up to 30 times.

-Difficulty: 15 

-Attack Roll (1d10+Dex+SMG Skill+2 for FA at close range): [dice]1d10+5+3+2[end-dice]  =17 vs 15

Damage rolled is determined by how many points above the difficulty. In this case the difficulty was 15 and Bob rolled a 17. That means 3 rounds impacted the booster gang member and 27 other rounds missed. Each 9mm bullet does 2d6+1, requiring three separate rolls. I've tried adding in multiplication, but that didn't work. Am I missing a solution? I guess cut and paste would work, but that is still annoying. I was trying to find a way to quickly calculate the rolls as that is the one big weakness of Cyberpunk's rules. 

Kallak

@Llywelyn, currently there is no multiplication setup in place, but there are definitely systems out there that adding one would really be good for. I'll do my email thing and see what I can do in that direction.

twiggyleaf

Although I had previously stated that our group does not use this feature, with the introduction of new lifestyles emerging from the spread of Covid-19, I have looked into it in terms of possibility of use in play by post futures, now that our normal gaming has been halted.  Will keep you updated.

GamingMegaverse

Just tried this for the first time- it is pretty cool!

twiggyleaf

We tried it recently on our Play by Post game.  I really like it!

:)

thaen

Awesome!  Glad y'all are liking it!

 

deannamross

World of Darkness Games require individual dice be rolled, each one being a success or failure.  For example ...



Bob attacks with 3 dexterity and 3 brawl - a total of 6d10 are being rolled.

The difficulty of his attack is 6.

Each die that rolls 6 or above = a success.

dice #1 = 4

dice #2 = 6

dice #3 = 2

dice #4 = 8

dice #5 = 9

dice #6 = 2

In this case Bob would have 3 successes to hit.  Now he has to roll his damage to dice to determine how effective his blow was.

Again that's a situation where the individual dice must hit a certain number to succeed.

I might suggest a set up where the user end is entered as 

• attack - [wwdice]6d10,diff=6[end-wwdice]

Then after it would reveal in text:  "attack - 3 successes" where the dice code was inserted.

 

Additionally in this system, ones can take away successes (botch)

10s can be rolled again (exploding dice it's called in some places.)

User end could look like this where those rules are in place -

• attack - [wwdice]6d10,diff=6,f1,e10[end-wwdice]

f=fail ... all dice rolling the number behind the letter f are discarded as failures

e=exploding ... all dice rolling number behind the dice are rolled again

the example above might yield on the backend...

dice #1 = 1

dice #2 = 6

dice #3 = 2

dice #4 = 8

dice #5 = 10

dice #6 = 2

rerolled dice #5 = 7

So from the original six dice, 3 rolled successes.  One rolled a one making it only 2 successes.  However one of the successes was a ten and so it was rolled a second time and it was a 7, adding another success for a total of 3 successes. 



After the roll the user would again see a result in the forum text that simply says:  "attack - 3 Successes"

 

Thanks for working on this, nifty stuff!

deannamross

Okay so I'm a really new person here (obviously) and I see that the site itself has a dice roller that accomplishes this very thing so clearly you knew what I meant without all the explaining up there.

I'm trying to track down if there is someplace we can (as a GM) view the rolls made on the dice roller?  It wouldn't really need to be IN the forums if I could simply go verify somewhere what someone rolled.

A great way to accomplish that would be to have the set up you got and a text entry area so when someone rolled they could write "Attacking Bob the Vampire" and specify what the roll was made for.  Then have a log of all rolls made on the site available for a GM to be able to view.  Heck, even a page that is nothing more than a history of rolls made so that players could view old rolls.  To save on storage you wouldn't need it to record endlessly but maybe the last 100 rolls made on the site? This way players could make rolls for their play by post games, and the ability for the entire community to view those rolls keeps everyone honest in what they do on the forums.

Just a thought.

thaen

@deannamross, welcome! 

The forum dice roller hasn't gotten that much usage, so we probably wouldn't add the World of Darkness stuff to that. 

And currently the popup dice roller rolls are only visible to the person rolling.

But I could see us adding a "history" to the popup dice roller and having that be shared across the Campaign, and also adding the "description" text area you mentioned so the rolls could be labeled.  Probably also a "date/time" to make it clear when things were rolled.

I'll add that to the dev list.  If anyone reading this would like this feature too, chime in.  It makes it more likely that the feature will make it to the top.

deannamross

@Thaen, thank you so much for your fast reply!  I look forward to seeing this function added.  Really appreciate it.  :)

thaen

@deannamross, hope I didn't mislead!  I've added this feature to the dev list, but that doesn't mean it will be getting done anytime soon.  There are a lot of features on the list in front of it.  But more community interest would bump it up in priority.