I’m not a craps player, so this is going entirely on what you’ve said here, but the problem - as I detect it - is that the mechanic essentially rests on the result of the roll of a dice, which is what most RPGs have been built upon since the dawn of time. The rules governing the mechanic are new, in a possibly over-complex way, but any attempt to reshape them seems destined to stray into the usual territory of modifiers and penalties; I found the last discussion more interesting as it moved away from the arbitrary result of the die roll itself.

An interesting system would be one in which extended play makes the results of the die rolls progressively harder. Returning to my zoning idea from before, at the start of the game the players would have a relatively easy run of things, but if the dice were to remain where they fell for the duration of the game then later rolls would become significantly harder - especially if the player was forced to switch from a d20 to, say, a d4.

Moving away from dice and back to craps, what this needs to be is a RPG based around darts. Stay with me here.

A darts board is constructed with twelve segments. The player throws first, trying to hit their 7 or 11. Then the GM throws, aiming for 2, 3 or 12, or establishing the point; then the player and the GM take it in turns to throw until resolution is reached, perhaps with an arbtrary throw-cap in the GM’s favour. The success of the players original action depends on the result of the darts game, but other players can gamble their own moves on the results, for the reward of greater effectiveness / more treasure. The advantage of darts over dice is that with darts it can be made illegal for the darts to be removed from the board, making gambling through linking moves in this way neccessary, as player success becomes less likely the more darts there are in the
board.

The weakness, of course, is that the GM will have to scale the challenge of the module so that it’s difficulties are believably progressive. It would be no use having a throw-off at the end of the game to allow the player to climb a wall that is harder than the throw off at the beginning to demolish a city block.

Also, maybe it would be tedious to break play every so often to play darts. But then, perhaps that is a weakness in the craps formula; it can be intrinsically time-consuming.

You can tell this is a 2am ramble - I’m not sure whether it’s cogent, let alone worth the effor of reading - but there’s an idea of sorts in there somewhere.

While the craps mechanic would still be relying on the roll of the dice, there are many more possibilities from the roll of said dice. It doesn’t have to neccessarily go the you win/you lose route. The multiple results and competative nature could lead to several tangents.

The problem with the darts idea is that it introduces something that skill can effect tremendously. A skilled dart player is going to have a tremendous advantage over anyone who has never really played. Its no longer an issue of luck. Its like building a mechanic based on a dice roll and baseball… Even though theres some luck involved, if I were to be matched against Sammy Sosa (who i doubt gets into the RPGs) I would most certainly get my ass kicked.

ITS TREMENDOUSLY TREMENDOUS.

just thought i’d make fun of myself before someone else felt the need.

“The odds for the “against” side are actually a little better than those for the “for” side.” - reading up on Craps in my humourless, over-analysed Reiner Knizia book of dice games, last night, it’s actually only about a tenth of a percentage off of 50% (which Knizia argues is a small price to play for the excitement of being the player who’s rolling the dice).

But no, can’t really think of any ways to make Craps more RPG-applicable without turning it into something too distantly removed from the original game. (Using polyhedral dice might be fun - different numbers of sides, and numbers of dice, depending on character skill - but probably too much of a probabalistic mess.)

There are a couple of elements that might be interesting to lift, though:-

Side Bets. Allowing players to place side bets on other players’ actions - perhaps using some floaty already-meta game variable as currency (”luck” rerolls or whatever your system might call them), or even experience points (which might be easier to work with for awkward odds - if someone’s trying to roll 18+ on a d20, you can just bet 3XP to gain 20). It’d make the bet-upon game actions more interesting to the group, but, eh, at the expense of flashing neon metagame.

The Hard Way. Just because it’s a great piece of jargon, really. That if the GM wants to add a difficulty modifier to an action, in a system using multiple dice, they can demand that the player roll “12+ the hard way”.

Okay, so what we have here is that craps isn’t a good resolution method, or at least has few advantages over regular dice (which have tidy probabilities that are kind to designers and players alike). But we have a few interesting ideas to play with: switching out dice for larger or smaller sides in the middle of resolution; letting other players bet for or against one player’s success; and the term “The Hard Way.”

Josh, I have to say that darts doesn’t really grab me, because I’m terrible at darts. But convince me! If nothing else, seeing craps implemented with darts instead of dice would be interesting all by itself.

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