This reminds me of a Blackjack-like mechanism I once came up with for poker that would let you combine multiple cards into one, so that you could turn 3255x into three of a kind.

Protodice would be good in a game in which dice are player property or otherwise first-class game objects. The problem is what good is a protodie? It’s a delayable chance to get a real die. The “chance” part is just another randomizer (albeit an interesting one), so the real interesting part for me is the fact that you can get the protodie and use it later and maybe trade it.

So why would you delay the chance to turn a protodie into a real die? Unless there’s something else going on, it’s like a Get Out of Jail Free card that you’re allowed to sell for $50. Just sell it already. There needs to be some incentive for saving up protodies that follows from the game rules.

Yeah, I agree. I’ve come up with a couple of things, but they seem artificial too. Like, you can only have a certain number of developed dice on the table at any time, and the opportunities for spending them to buy back protodice are more limited than the opportunities to spend protodice. But that’s a boring constraint, not an interesting one.

Hmm… maybe you earn protodice for accomplishing something difficult in-game? The problem then is that you might work hard to earn a reward and have it turn out to be a useless d2, which makes the game less fun. If you earn a reward, it should be worth what you paid for it.

If you could compound protodice, there’d be a case for saving them for later. You’d forgo an expected d6 die roll now because if you got another protodie you could cash them both in for an expected d8 die, and use that die from then on.

The analogy here would be those space shooter arcade games like Life Force where you save units of power-up currency to get cool lasers, rather than making your ship faster right now. The difference here is that it’s always somewhat nondeterministic which power-up you get.

Except, why would you want an expected d8 instead of two expected d6es? It’s the same problem over again.

Do it the other way around, may be. Make the rolls of developed dice analogous to “life” or “hit points” or “healing” whatever the relative field is, so that it is necessary to develop dice to survive, while the greatest benefits (say, sepcial abilities gained through quantity of protodice, protodice only being used for attack / ability rolls) are gained from plentiful protodice.

Okay. You can roll any number of protodice. Use the high roll, but the other rolled ones don’t get expended.

So if you get one protodice, and roll it right away, you’re just as likely to get a d2 as a d12. But if you save up and don’t roll until you get three, your odds of a nice one are much better. Plus, you can do temporary trades… “I’ll loan you my two protodice since you’re rolling and could use a boost, but you need to give them back after you roll, and give me Nice Thing X in addition.”

Oh, that I like. You’d only roll one protodie under desperate circumstances, moments of truth, whatever; you could save up your resources until you got a solid five or six dice, and be practically guaranteed a d10+. Excellent!

I wonder if there’s a way to combine this with Josh’s “endurance versus effectiveness” scale?

I think this could be a really good mechanic for an RPG; you could tie conflict resolution to experience gained in a very direct way, like “you lived through the gunfight–do you get a d2 (wound trait, scar) or a d8 (confidence trait, gun skill)?”

The two ideas can be combined. Say that the player has his ’stash’ of protodice. If he elects to use a quantity of those to make a developed dice, only the one that is developed is expended, but the remainder cannot be used or counted towards abilities for the remainder of that turn. This mechanic could then be used for all abilities; players gain spells or abilities or whatever that need a certain number of protodice to be cast, and of which a certain number get developed to determine success.

Experience can then be divined through the developed dice at the end of combat - the roll of the highest developed dice multiplied by the total number of same, say, or a trait based on the size of the median developed dice

I like the idea of players ending up with small mountains of protodice, grouping them off into smaller piles, working out the best way to apportion them to get the best results. Smaller spells means more developed dice means more (or a greater chance of) experience, but a smaller pool of protodice to apportion in the next battle and big spells to draw from in times of need.

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