Loving everyone's games so far! Has anyone done the math on the degrading dice to see what can increase/decrease difficulty? I've gotten feedback from a few people who've played my submission stating that they felt it wasn't hard to make a successful deduction. Ultimately, I did want this to be the case, since tonally my game is more of a "kid detective" thing than something high stakes, but it got me thinking about ways one can increase/decrease difficulty in this system!
Hey Lady Tabletop! We have had some discussion around that on our Discord, and there are several ways to make the clue gathering easier or harder. As designed, I tried to strike a balance while erring on the side of more clues than fewer. That said, here are some ways to tweak the difficulty:
The total number of Clues available to the player This is impacted by the number of locations, and whether a player can collect 1 or more clues per location, or if some locations can be ‘duds’ without a Clue to gather, but just a complication to overcome.
Skill Dice degradation You can increase or decrease when a Skill Die decreases. In the game that inspired the skill dice, Breathless, the dice actually degraded after every roll regardless of outcome. That said, I wouldn’t reduce the starting die value. Because failures reduce the die a step, starting lower runs the risk of rolling a ton of failures and depleting your die quickly.
One mod I’ve made for Jester King’s Dance is a 10+ roll gives you 2 clues. That will still be rare, and early on. Or right after a Refill Your Cup, but it’s the whisper of a chance to catch up if you’ve rolled poorly earlier.
Resetting Skill Dice The “Refill Your Cup” mechanic resets their skills to max. After a certain number of locations, it becomes mechanically impossible to gather more clues as their skills drop. If you have fewer locations, or want a harder game, consider removing this.
The start value of your Deduction Die The Start value can be anything you choose, starting at d0. You can adjust not only how high the Deduction Die goes, but when do they start adding modifiers? Modifiers remove the swingy-ness of the final roll, and can be removed entirely in favor of larger die probabilities vs. guaranteed success.
The Target Number of their final roll needs to hit. If you are expecting players to achieve a d100 + 10 on their final roll, bumping the Deduction Roll’s target number from 5+, to 15, 20, 25+ or even higher is another option. Or, combine the two: After the Deduction Die reaches a certain size, instead of adding modifiers, begins reducing the high target number for success for each additional clue.
I hope this helps! And if you think of any other ways to tweak the difficulty, I’d love to hear them.
Thanks so much for the detailed reply!
I've mostly focused on the Skill Dice Degradation. I made one of the failure conditions (the "less bad" one) only result in no clue, not dice degradation. It had the intended effect of making "winning" easier, but as I mentioned, some folks wanted more difficulty! I'm considering adding a "how to make it harder" optional rule and this breakdown really helps.
Thanks!
