Slight addition to the Dice Roller and macros in MT

[Cweord]

I am trying to advertise MT in the Shadowrun Forums (especially after the recent news on SW). The biggest problem is that the dice roller doesn't provide what is needed for shadowrun.

Shadowrun is D6 based, with successes on a 5 or 6 and critical failures depending on the number of 1's you get.

What I need is a simple expression for the dice roller that will give me the number of successes and the number of ones.

What would be even better, though less necessary is an option that will automatically re roll 6's and let you know the 5s and 6s again (but ignoring 1'st this time) and keep doing it till it runs out of 6's (this is only done occasionally when characters decided to use 'edge' so is less important)

Another useful thing would be for the Macros to access ID's in the properties section (I have been pushing for this for a bit) so a simple macro could be used on a variety of characters (Shadowrun uses stat + skill to calculate the no of dice you have). As the macro box can access macro id's from properties, would it be a lot of work to enable it to pick up numbers from properties?

Finally a GM box that can be tied in to macros where you can put a simple number (or have a series of numbers in check boxes) that the macro can be told to access for modifiers. A simple box for a single no would do it, but having a user definable check list, with tick boxes would be nicer in the long run.

These are about the only changes to the current system that shadowrun needs, there are ways round it but they are a bit clunky and if I'm doing the hard sell it would be nice to be able so say these were somewhere in the works.

[Full Bleed]

Shadowrun is D6 based, with successes on a 5 or 6 and critical failures depending on the number of 1's you get.

What I need is a simple expression for the dice roller that will give me the number of successes and the number of ones.

Not to be particularly dense on the issue, but in a face-to-face game don't they just roll the dice and tally this stuff up themselves? Why is it really so imperative that MT tells you "You rolled Two 1's" when you're looking at the rolls and can see that you rolled two 1's or three dice that were over 5?

[Cweord]

It isn't imperative, but would speed along game play (if you have 20 npcs shooing, that is a lot of totting up).

On that logic, why have any of the advance functions in the dice roller.

Also it would then work better when synced with macros that work out the skill for you. The less time the GM has to spend thinking about dice, the more time they can spend on description and interacting with the players, and the more the game flows.

[Full Bleed]

On that logic, why have any of the advance functions in the dice roller.

Well, I admit, I don't know everything that the die roller already does. But this seemed so basic to me that I just wondered why Shadowrun players would need it to be enticed to MT.

Yet, when you said this:

What would be even better, though less necessary is an option that will automatically re roll 6's and let you know the 5s and 6s again (but ignoring 1'st this time) and keep doing it till it runs out of 6's (this is only done occasionally when characters decided to use 'edge' so is less important)

I better understood the kind of automation you were asking for because, unlike rolling real dice, it's a little hard to sort out dice from a grouping and just re-roll specific dice when you're talking about digital dice. The complexity of this was immediately obvious to me, and yet, you described it as "less necessary."

Also it would then work better when synced with macros that work out the skill for you. The less time the GM has to spend thinking about dice, the more time they can spend on description and interacting with the players, and the more the game flows.

True. But I guess there is just something inherently strange to me about not tallying up my successes and failures myself. Put it this way... would you be happy if the die roller mechanic didn't even show your die rolls at all, and just reported back the number of 1's and over 5's and 6's? I'd personally feel like I was missing an important part of the "die rolling" experience (that is, seeing the results, and reacting to them as I would real dice... "Man I was close of 3 of those! O-well!")

So I guess I understand the need for complex die roller mechanics more than the low-level stuff. It's probably just a perception thing...

[Cweord]

The reason that the re rolls is less necessary (and that is only in 4th ed, it counted on every roll prior to that) is you only get to re roll on specific occasions, most characters only have 3 or 4 edge points, so can only use it 3 or 4 times an adventure.

At the moment I can tell the system to roll every die separately and check the scores, but with large numbers of die that gets tedious and takes time that could be best spent else where.

I have always seen dice as a necessary evil, but the more you can cut down the mechanics the more you get for actual roleplay (rather than Rollplay)

[trevor]

I'll make sure giliath is aware of this thread, he's the author of the roll engine.

[jay]

I don't know if you use Init Tool or not, but I have been adding scripting for other games to it lately. If you would like I could do this for shadowrun if you can provide me a (legal) copy of the rules.

[Cweord]

I'll see how much the PDF is.

[jay]

Do they have any preview stuff that they give away for free? I'm pretty sure that there will be copyright problems if I put anything that is paid for into a free tool.

[heruca]

http://shadowrun.fr/file_download/48/Sh ... master.pdf

I just happened to snag this today, so I had the link handy.

[jay]

That looks like it is perfect. Thanks!

[Cweord]

I also dropped a line to the production team, to see if they were interested in donating a few pdf full copies of the main rules.

[jay]

Make sure that I plan to distribute the game mechanics in a free product. I certainly don't want them upset with me

[RPMiller]

I'm curious if you guys have researched whether dice mechanics can be copyrighted. I'm not a lawyer nor do I pretend, or want to be, but I'm fairly sure that you can't copyright a dice mechanic. If you could, a lot of game developers out there are in a lot of trouble. Both board games and RPGs. I personally haven't researched it so it is an honest question that I have.

Also, I'm pretty sure that you can't copyright a mechanic (sort of). By that I mean, you can't use the same wording, but you can have exactly or nearly exactly, the same math.

Now what I know you can copyright are the rules themselves and the verbiage that the mechanics use. Things like stats though I'm pretty sure you can't as they are simply words, but specific groupings of words might be copyright-able.

Of course I suppose this all depends greatly on what the the products copyright says, and what the lawyers can actually prosecute over. This comes up a lot with the OGL stuff out there.

[Cweord]

I told them that, and to come look over here