Love it. I especially like that funk had a rather different meaning back when that was written.

Yes, I don't know why the new result has to stand even if its worse.

I don't much like re-roll rules in the first place (reneging on the contract with the dice gods isn't kosher), but have no issues with "the new result stands". It's a gamble, and a gamble gives me a small kick. You wasted that resource? Tough luck, noone forced you to try for more when you already had a somewhat passable result.

@@gernwind9262 Yeah, but the resource is wasted whether the new worse result stands or not, it just means that re-rolls are more often viable options, and more viable options are more choices, which is good.

To anyone reading this post, what would you say to the following rule, when you would normally get a reroll, you change the result of any one die to a result of 4?

I did notice that rule, I think its a very interesting and worthwhile ongoing effect to include, I'd like to see it more often.

Sure, but that in itself is a questionable choice, the decision to close down your own design space for fear of being unable to properly control it. And that might be a wise move when you're working on something you intend to get as big and sprawling as something like 40k or whatever, but that restriction continues to turn up in 50 page one and done rule sets. Even the most slipshod and casual designer can keep on top of loopholes in a design of that size.

I think you sort of answered your own question there, its true that archers might not be willing to shoot blindly over hills or forests (although if a group of heavily armed psychopaths just went out of view behind terrain that extends around to my squishy and oh so stabable flanks I think I'd be inclined to risk an arrow or two over there) but there's really no logic to why they are so widely unable to fire over their own troops who presumably are well capable mentioning that the enemy are still there.

@Rule of Carnage Because bows, crossbows, slings, javelins, et cetera are LoS weapons. You do not know the angle of elevation to use without seeing the target and seeing where a ranging shot or volley lands.

Well, only if you give people infinite re-rolls. Players are still only allowed to re-roll a dice as many times as they are allowed to re-roll them, if a player has three re-rolls all game, that's a long way from directly equating to success and I would argue that if the drama is high on one re-roll, the tension and drama when someone needs to re-roll a second or third time is still pretty high. Furthermore, I would argue that allowing someone to re-roll one dice three times allows continuation of play just as much, if not more, than allowing them to re-roll three dice once, since it has less decision making attached and so should be quicker to resolve. I've come across the idea that allowing a dice to be re-rolled twice is the same as removing all chance from a game and as someone who has failed to get the desired result on a dice even after re-rolling it two or three times, I can tell you, that's not the case. We do learn a good deal from Featherstone et al. (Mike seems to be presently in quite the rabbit hole with them), one of the most ever-present positions in a lot of those older pieces though I would argue is to take and use rules the way that make sense for your table and your game. There's not a single way of using re-rolls and I think that the pervasive nature of never re-rolling a re-roll would be exactly the sort of thing that former generation would find peculiar.

@@RuleofCarnage In Warhammer 40k, there are rules that allow a unit to reroll hits/wounds... There is no finite resource called "rerolls", just a rule stating that a unit may reroll these dice under certain conditions. I would say that would be grounds for not allowing a reroll of a reroll, as you might as well otherwise say "all this units hits/to wound rolls succeed every time".

@@user-li5cu9hh5k I think that just requires a clarification that each source re-rolls its dice once.

That makes sense

My rule of thumb for homebrew rules is to always allow the person who didn't write them to pick the sides.

@@RuleofCarnage This was back in the 1970s. A box of 8th army, a box of Wehrmacht and a couple of model tanks. No concept of command/control rules, no ammunition or fuel limits, just shooting and cover. We were young, we didn't know much.

Well, that's an argument for why you might not allow those kinds of re-rolls in games with bolt action rifles, I'm not saying and never would say that all rules are appropriate for all games, that's sort of the point of the video. If you're simulating a sci-fi game where aiming is about getting some sort of target lock which can be re-calculated hundreds of times a second then saying that getting more than a second chance is unreasonable would be just as inappropriate.

That's a cool extra bit of detail.

I'm not a big fan of straight re-rolls, but I think partial re-rolls or ones that drain a dice pool can be effective, exactly so that you're not just re-doing things. For example, in Gaslands you can re-roll any number of a pool of dice, so you can keep some and re-roll the others, so you're not generally just doing things over.

Its tough because they flatten the probability curve, but right where the spikes are potentially their most interesting. I always feel as though if there's something I really want a player to re-roll if it goes wrong, remove the bit where it goes really wrong. If it shouldn't happen, have it not happen.

Nice. I really think that re-rollable re-rolls give many more interesting moments. So long as players have a limited number available, and I honestly can't think of any games where there aren't limits on them anyway.

Totally, if there's a low probability event and a re-roll, just take the event out, its clearly not actually intended to happen.

The thing is that allowing an infinite number of re-rolls doesn't mean giving players an infinite number of re-rolls, in fact a game that allows you to re-roll dice repeatedly could spend far less time re-rolling than one that only allows you to do it once. If a game lets you re-roll twice, but it can be the same dice twice that's less re-rolling than re-rolling ten times but only different dice. Ultimately you can control the number of times a dice is re-rolled in your game by only giving players a certain number of re-rolls, not arbitrarily controlling the number of times a given dice is re-rolled. If re-rolling dice isn't terribly interesting, then the answer should be to not allow re-rolls at all, not to only allow one of them, the position there seems to be either to allow all re-rolling if its interesting, or ban it if its not. I'm not clear on how stating that you can't re-roll is more clear than stating that can, either way can be explicitly stated just as easily. The non-binary state question becomes more interesting if an original state can stand, not less. If 2 is just about acceptable to me then I'm far more likely to ignore the choice of taking a re-roll until I get a 1 rather than engaging with it.

The most important point isn't so much the inherent value or purpose of the rules in question as much as the fact that they're presumed by a lot of designs. I see a lot of games where those rules are practically the first things people put in. I've literally seen at least one design that had the rule about not re-rolling a re-roll and then didn't have enough re-rolls to ever allow anyone to re-roll a re-roll anyway. I've got no problem with people concluding they're necessary as the design goes on, but we see them over and over and over irrespective of the design they turn up in.

I think its certainly for ease of play, although when a game allows pursuers to leave the field and then return allowing a rally test as you cross the table edge if not pursued and returning as if pursuing if passed would really not be any more complex. The thing is that its such an arbitrary point, what I'm certain doesn't happen in the historical records is a battle where within a certain invisible boundary troops sometimes rallied and sometimes didn't and yet outside of that invisible boundary 100% of troops never ever rallied. If a fleeing troop has a possibility of rallying there's no sane reason why five feet to the left they never ever rally. Clearly if a given system doesn't allow rallying on the basis that troops tend to keep running that's fine, but if it allows rallying there's no reason for the table boundaries to be magically significant. The thing about allowing aggression is that it makes sense for your own troops breaking across the back edge of your own deployment zone (although that makes even less historical sense since that would presumably often be where those troops own baggage trains and commanders would be stationed, making them the troops most likely to be encouraged to rally), but it makes zero sense for troops that are breaking through and even less for ones making a flanking move. Making the left and right edges of the table deadly for advancing troops actually discourages interesting aggressive moves, particularly with units that might rely on feigned flight.

@@RuleofCarnage There are two obstacles to this, as I see it. They are not insurmountable obstacles, but still tricky problems. The first is simply the player's attention. By tradition and well-established practice, if it's on the table it's alive and if it's off the table it's dead. It's easy to forget about a unit that maneuvered, for whatever reason, off the table and intending to come back. The second problem is tracking position. Once it's off the table you can't know where it stopped, how it maneuvered, and therefore where it comes back in again.

@@attentionspanlabs Yeah, I think it would take a bit of work, but I think the payback of having tactically interesting broad sweeping flanking moves on smaller tables would be worth the effort. On a very simple level, it is possible to simply have a unit leave a table, generate its entrance point and move it back to the table edge ready to return to remind people of its being an active unit.

@@RuleofCarnageThat raises the issue of units on the table being able to shoot or at least spot them before that happens. I am sure you know this already, but Not Action allows flanking, but only by units held in reserve at the beginning of the game. In my opinion, all of this stuff is best and easily handled by a GM.

@@attentionspanlabs So many things can be fixed with an Umpire, I was interested to see a few recent rulesets suggesting Umpires, I wonder if its something that might swing back into fashion. I think that if you have a pre-existing set of reserve deployment rules, then a lot of the problem solves itself since units moving off the table fold into that fairly easily. As I say, of course there are a few extra rules that need to be included, but I really think they're well worth the effort for the return.

My only note is that surely the four leaf clover should have triggered on a 4 not a 6?

​@@RuleofCarnage Rolling a 6 was considered lucky in that playgroup at the time. That came from board games from our childhood using regular six-sided dice, so there was a lot of jokes flying around like "6! I roll again!".

1) Well, the difference is that a re-roll with a keep option can be saved and only used after seeing the first roll while rolling two and keeping one has to be activated before rolling, its an input vs output randomness difference. 2) I really think that closing down the design space in fear of stacking, particularly for small independent games, is a mistake. It makes sense for something like GW who want to allow multiple designers to create multiple things in the same space, but for a single individual creating a single closed system its just not necessary.

Mike has been delving through some very old game systems recently so it was from something pretty obscure. In this case it honestly just didn't make sense and had been done pretty much arbitrarily, I think because the whole system didn't use ranges but rather specific target numbers only so it seemed to just not occur to them that a range would be easier to remember and engage with.

Actually, there's sound logic to the 1, 3, 6 and 2, 4, 5 split for a 50/50 roll. On a d6, the 1, 3, and 6 faces cover 1 continuous half of the die while 2, 4, 5 covers the other half. It's closer to a fair coin.

There's always a balance to consider, but I do think its odd that when a game mentions that corpses don't turn into smoke and float away when they die that's a matter worthy of mention. I've played so many games where the combatants would be stood on a mound of corpses as high as a house and it starts to get a little comical that they're never referenced. Every game has to make a choice about its level of granularity, its just strange that systems will go into pages of granularity on weapons and armor systems and yet avoid even a single rule in relation to the place where the corpses of your brothers rot.

Stargrunt does something similar, though in the other direction. Successful medevac boosts morale, and can even take a unit's morale higher than its starting value. BTW, a couple of years ago I was hired to code a simulation for Rand that simulated morale--ahem, excuse me, "will to fight"--and dealing with casualties and evacuating them was a very convoluted part of that.

Sure, if the re-roll was to re-roll any number of the bucket of dice, but if you have two single dice re-rolls available and chuck 40 dice picking up one of the dice and rolling it twice isn't going to shut everything down.

It can be weird, advantages are regularly abstracted to being a result of the disadvantage of the target being double charged, but when that explanation is emergent it doesn't always land.

I think that's reasonable and how many people treat them, but that is sort of weird and back to front though when you think about it. What I mean is, a re-roll is designed to reduce the amount of luck needed to be successful, its a second chance at getting the roll right while push your luck mechanics are about increasing the luck in a game and making it so that there aren't any second chances. They're two mechanics that do mechanically very different things, but are often experienced as quite similar, which is sort of weird.

@@RuleofCarnage push of luck is taking risk to a) loose everything or b) win bigger reward. Imagine that you need for example spend resource as "will points" or something similar for doing it (re-roll). So you have a few scenarios here; 1 roll was miss, 1 roll was success 1 roll was critical success. Obvously you will not want to re-roll that first roll when it was criticall success. So we need to think about both other scenarios - miss / normal success. When it was a miss - giving a player option to "try harder", risk his resource of "will point" is rather a good thing to do. It's making some place for decision - should I keep it for other re-rolls that turn or this is the most crucial test this turn for me and I should try to re-roll? Second scenario is what I was talking about in my previous post - sometimes you feel that you NEED that critical success. You need that extra point(s) of damage or just a few inches of move etc. So you are making decision - should I risk and accept potential total failure? So it's all about giving a player a second chance, more decision making, dealing with consequences. And since it's just that "one time re-roll" and you CANNOT pick which results from those two rolls you want to keep - it creates whole dynamic of risk-reward system. Personally I like it a lot and plan to put it in my game. So you could hate me and my game then. ;)

@@madluper Firstly, that's not really an example of losing everything though. If you rolled five dice and they all came up hits but you decided you needed 6 hits and so re-roll one dice looking for a crit you've not lost everything if it goes wrong, you still have the other four hits. It would only be a push your luck mechanic if there was a result on the dice which lost you all of your hits. Push your luck mechanics work because you have more on the line than just the dice you're re-rolling, its why the first roll in a series of push your luck rolls is always quite dull, because there's nothing to lose, similar to when the second player has to push their luck or lose. Secondly, the issue with not letting people potentially fall back to their first result is that they only use re-rolls when they have nothing to lose. If you NEED that crit, then there's not really a tension in re-rolling is there? You need it, so you'll shoot for it, and when you don't need it with no fall back good enough is good enough. If re-rolls are a limited resource then there's an interesting choice, and the fall back option actually increases the number of interesting choices. Still, the main reason that "You can't refer back to your earlier roll" is a weird rule is, if it wasn't in the game, no-one would think you could revert to the original roll. The rule is essentially superfluous, which is what really makes it a bad rule. Thirdly, we would never hate on a set of choices in a design, what we have an issue with is assuming these rules as the default. Always consider the alternative is the point we're making.

I guess that's down to whether your preference is output or input randomness. Boosting rolls is a good idea, but I think you need to then clearly signal threats to people otherwise you can end up with endowed value wasting the option.

@@RuleofCarnage thanks!

Generally, I totally agree. I get why its done for ease of playing, but a bit more randomness at least through difficult terrain, when running or charging is a good thing.

@RuleofCarnage ever since playing Too Fat Lardy rules, I have realised how much I dislike them. It adds to game friction and simulates the enemy getting the jump on a force and just keeps the players on their toes about making choices. I always look at ways of replacing fixed movement with variable move in any new game I buy.

BTW, really enjoying the podcast, only discovered it recently and have been working my way through the episodes.

@@StormofSteelWargaming Glad you're enjoying it.

​@@StormofSteelWargaming2FL's dice determining your actions rule set is one of my favourite for low model number games.

Every design choice has strengths and weaknesses, the point isn't to say that allowing the re-roll of re-rolls is always and everywhere right for every design, the point is to say that not allowing it isn't always right and shouldn't be an assumption. Its currently the default rule, despite it being a blanket backstop rule that limits a game's design space. My position would be, write a game without it, and if you find that you're repeatedly putting in re-roll rules with the caveat "...only once", then put in the blanket rule, but if you don't, leave it off. Its fairly usual rules writing practice to build rules on a case by case basis then, when you realize that a certain exception is true more often than its false to make it into a rule, except with re-rolls, which is odd. I would say, not allowing stacking does put players in the position of not being sure if a second source will be of reduced worth when it overlaps with another power, and a blanket rule reduces the design space for all future design. I agree that the limit should generally be 1 or no limit, I just prefer to limit how many re-rolls players have by not giving them too many rather than with an over-arching rule.

I don't think that every charging unit should get a negative, but I do think that infantry charging into combat normally getting a bonus, even at the absolute edge of their charge range being the default is quite odd. I have heard before the idea that without charge bonuses players would sit back and avoid combat, and I'm not convinced that's the case. For one thing, if you have a bow and I have a sword, I'm going to be looking to get a close combat started no matter what penalty I might suffer. For the other, in my experience no matter how bad an idea you make smashing into close combat in a game, a player's first reaction will be to run up and bash their friends over the head with a stick. I think we fear people sitting back rather more than it actually happens.

@@RuleofCarnage The incentive of getting attacked by archers is a great point. I think that objectives can also do a lot to get players to get closer to their opponents models. Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Yeah, plenty of good historical reasons for a charge bonus. And most rulesets take the pike phalanx waiting on the other side into account. The main issue with the charge bonus in gameplay terms, is this weird cat and mouse/chess game that results from not wanting to be on the receiving end of a charge. To charge you need to be in range, meaning the other side needs to set itself up to being charged. Results in troops that never advance for fear of being hit first. There are ways to alleviate this, for example with counter-charge mechanics or irregular activations, but it is an issue that needs to be kept in mind.

I actually think the opposite. If I give you 5 re-rolls in a turn and allow you to re-roll re-rolls, then if you decide to re-roll and fail again, you'll tend to automatically re-roll again, quite quickly, until you get a success or run out of re-rolls. If however I give you the same number of re-rolls with no ability to re-roll a re-roll then every single time you use a re-roll, its a fresh choice and a fresh consideration, which will generally take longer.

Sure, but that's only relevant in games where you put in a way for players to get a dozen re-rolls. The point is not to have an issue with "cannot re-roll a re-roll" as a rule, but to have a problem with it as an assumption. I've seen it listed in games where there was no possible way of being able to re-roll a re-roll anyway, with or without the rule. Its a rule that gets put in before a design sees if its necessary, as a default, and that I have a problem with. If you have a game that allows players to have a dozen re-rolls that they can generally apply freely to any result they like, I'd suggest that's probably a bigger problem with pacing than whether they can apply it to one roll or not. But if you have a game where the most re-rolls that could ever be stacked on a single roll is two or three, why not then allow a re-roll to be re-rolled?

​@@RuleofCarnage If you're completely done with the game design and all factions/expansions - sure, I could see the benefit for allowing rerolls of rerolls when the current cap is around three... ...but when the game designer needs to keep the design space open for future expansions, it seems like you're cutting off an avenue of design that could be explored NOT limiting the re-rolls by default. After all, if there are only a cap of three re-rolls, you're not making much different to the game as it stands, but when some future expansion adds another three re-rolls to that cap - that changes things immensely. So, for me, the issue comes down to whether the game design is completely final or whether you might need that open for the future.

@@BTolputt I'd take the position that a designer, particularly an independent designer, should avoid designing their current game based on a future that might never happen. A no re-rolling a re-roll rule can always be included in a future expansion or faction if it becomes necessary, and I believe that adding in a rule that doesn't do much is something that should always be avoided.

​​@@RuleofCarnage I can understand that perspective. I am of the view that one shouldn't cut off future avenues of design/possibility unless you have to. It's a matter of preference I guess. I like keeping options available unless I know I won't need them. Glass half full & all that. That said, a rule that changes how core feature works just to support one faction seems worse than a rule that (as we seem to agree) won't change much given reasonable limits on re-roll caps. I think there'd be more confusion from changing how rerolls work than there is problems with limiting rerolls to one & done to start with. That is, of course, assuming the "keep the better roll" option I mentioned earlier.

​@@RuleofCarnagejust a note, I'm not trying to argue you are wrong and I am right. This is, to me, a matter of personal opinion not an objective "this is clearly better than the other". Pros & cons.

Exactly why I consider them a very problematic choice. I remember playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle where miscasts could kill you and if a vampire count general died their whole army died having an opponent's general die to a miscast on turn one and deciding to just ignore it because otherwise the game was over and thinking, there should just be a rule to stop this happening.

Then our job is done.

I think, as with most things, it very much depends on the game you're trying to make. If you're creating a game about larger than life heroic individuals, I think its fine to say that they can get to a point where there are some things that they never fail to do, if a character is meant to never miss I think better to make them never miss than risk bad dice meaning they can't hit a barn door. Equally, if you're going for something a bit more realistic, I think its fine to have it so that a pistol at the limits of its range clearly can't destroy a tank, or penetrate a bunker or whatever. As with most things, I think the important thing is to consider specifics rather than default to an assumed rule.

@@RuleofCarnage yes, absolutely, context is king. I totally get the "here's my main person doing their main thing, please don't have it do nothing".

But simply making some units better against others or giving flank and rear bonuses encourages aggression. Giving charge bonuses is simply an encouragement never to enter into your opponent's charge range rather than an encouragement to aggression. Without charge bonuses units can far more easily bring aggressive pressure and even bait charges, it also reduces first turn advantages. In my experience, shooting units won't charge, whatever the bonus, and close combat units will even without it, so I really don't think it changes behaviour. Well, at least you're right almost half the time then.

Thanks for your response! So here we go: Flanking / rear bonuses fit's perfectly if you have a game about regiments with rectangular bases etc. There is also a place for strong classic unit types differences in such games. But even there - you could have both - those bonuses for clever maneuvers AND "impact bonus" from charge action. People have less time now for playing games with all distraction types around. Games like other hobbies fights for it's own "air time" with literally everything. Most of players nowdays wants fast, almost instant-fun. For that purppse some mechanics are dropped or changed, simplyfied. Aggressive styles of gameplay are promoted, not going around each other or waiting in a corner. And I'm sure you know it. When you look at the skirmish level, individual models encounters - they works with 360' models awarness idea now, round bases. Not many recent games of this type come with "face of the model" mechanic anymore, fior sake of keeping everything faster and less problematic. Feels like making a "good" line of sight rules is a challange for many designers even without that aspect. The whole move measurment discussion depends on a game. Some games adds sometimes for example "move+DX" to the charge mechanic and treat differently what happens next, until "charge bonus" is applied. So you don't know sometimes if you would "make it", you take risk for a potential reward. Love your "come back" at the end of your post btw :)

@@madluper Yes, but charge bonuses don't necessarily either encourage aggressive play or make a game move faster, they encourage players to finish a combat in a single turn, which isn't inherently the same thing. Often in games with charge bonuses if a unit fluffs its attacks on the charge the result is a long, dull and drawn out combat with units that now lack the ability to change a stalemate. With units that have more inherent abilities combats are less likely to be drawn out. As I mentioned before, I don't think charge bonuses make aggressive units and forces more aggressive than they would be anyway. Shooting units don't want to charge, and can be aggressive without charging, close combat units do want to charge irrespective of the bonus. Charge bonuses make entering into charge range dangerous, meaning that two units with the same charge ranges in a game with charge bonuses are actually encouraged to sit back and let the other person make the first move rather than the other way around. You're quite right that games are fighting for attention and up against easier to engage with media, which is why rules that introduce exceptions, like charge bonuses, should be more questionable. Without charge bonuses single rule systems for movement and combat can be used across the game, with charge bonuses a whole set of, often relatively complex, charge rules need to be included. I think there are still plenty of games that have facings in their rules, and I think that good line of sight rules are far more of a challenge without it, rather than the other way around. I also think that games that do have 360 line of sight and strong charge bonuses really struggle to create any sort of actually interesting dynamics and challenging player interactions. They often dissolve into a morass or have to use other systems to create interest. Making a game about rolling the right charge distance bonus often means creating a system where a single, or very few lucky dice rolls decides a whole game, which can simply create an unsatisfying experience. Ultimately the point isn't that charge bonuses don't have their place in design, but that assuming that chargers should get a bonus is problematic from a design perspective, as with any assumption about elements in a design. My point isn't, never put in charge bonuses, my point is, don't assume that because something is charging it should get a bonus. Also, don't assume that charge bonuses will inherently make a game faster and more aggressive, because it can result in the exact opposite in both cases.

@@RuleofCarnage Thank you for your time. I really appreicate your replies for both my comments / threads here. While I still think you are missing some of my points and in some degree "design taste" comes in- those disscussions gave me some food for thought.

@@madluper Always happy to chat game design. Ultimately I don't think there are really ever design choices that are just right or wrong, pretty much everything has its place, but that anything which is assumed or standard should be looked at extra hard.

Possibly, which specifically were you thinking of?

Which part specifically are you referring to?

Just re-read the otherwise very good ruleset for Saga which has one of the worst re-rolls rules. I can't re-roll a dice I re-rolled, but you can. Because that makes total sense.

@@RuleofCarnage

I can't speak for Mike, but I've never played Marvel Crisis Protocol (I don't think Mike has). Legend was certainly put up online a while before MCP was released. Legend was originally my trying to write a "Kung Fu Hustle" game based on an idea I had from reading a review of a Steampunk minis game about ten years ago, but its just a fun little thing that I put together, tested a few times and offered to anyone who's interested, so I hope you get a few laughs out of it.