Probably some of you already saw this linked at Interconnected, but I think it’s excellent: a quick transcript of Raph Koster’s keynote address at the Game Developers Conference earlier this month. One of the premises: games are worthwhile and even didactic, not in their content (Grand Theft Auto) or intent (Reader Rabbit), but by their very nature.

“We tend to think of fun as being frivolous. The stuff that doesn’t matter. And this is the serious games cheer line: I’m here to tell you that fun is not only not frivolous but fundamental to human nature and required for survival. Therefore what we do is saving the human race from extinction. [laughs]”

Ken says:

“how about a gambling/rpg???

like, for instance, if you’re really about to get into a fight, you dont really have a concept of hit points. if theres a car about to hit you, you dont start hoping “gee, i hope this car isn’t capable of dealing more than 4d8 damage, or i’m probably screwed cause i only have 24 hit points available.”

somehow players would have to have hit points, but the amount they had could be hidden from them. could be interesting, yet somewhat hard to implement and/or control.”

Like I said in the comments, this made me think of an RPG that uses craps mechanics the way some RPGs use card-game mechanics. I’m not aware of any published RPG that uses craps, because RPGs do such weird things with dice that they tend to consider six-sided dice and gambling passé. I’m sure someone has tried it at some point, but obviously it hasn’t made a big splash.

I think it could, though. I’m going to introduce a couple things real quick: how craps works (based on a five-minute read of the Wikipedia craps article) and task resolution vs. conflict resolution, which we’ll get to in a second.

In craps, you place a bet for or against the shooter. The shooter rolls two dice and hopes they come up as a total of 7 or 11. If they do, the “for” side wins. If they come up 2, 3 or 12, the “against” side wins. If they do neither, everybody takes note of the total (called the “point”) and the shooter keeps rolling. If the point comes up again before a 7 does, the “for” betting side wins. If the shooter rolls a 7 before rolling the point, the “against” side wins. The farther from 7 the point was, the greater the payoff.

There are a lot more weird rules about betting, but this is the essential mechanic. Obviously, if you can bet for or against somebody, there’s no advantage for the house; this is why most casinos “bar” either a 2 or 12 roll and keep all bets if that’s what’s rolled the first time. (Mean casinos bar a 3.)

To me, this mechanic seems tailor-made for conflict resolution. Vincent Baker explains this concept better than I can at Roleplaying Theory, Hardcore–scroll down to the fourth entry, and notice where I subconsciously got the name of this weblog–but it’s essentially this:

• Task resolution is success or failure, eg “do I leap across this pit?” or “do I hit him?”
• Conflict resolution is winning or losing, eg “do I beat you at tic-tac-toe (and therefore get your Skittles)?” or “does he run me over (and therefore injure or kill me)?”

There’s only one interesting side to task resolution; there are two interesting sides to conflict resolution. That’s why I think the opposed-betting mechanic of craps would be cool for it. One could consider it functionally equivalent to flipping a coin–except craps is more complicated, and so more fun to mess with.

First problem: the odds for the “against” side are actually a little better than those for the “for” side. Player Characters in an RPG should win more than half the time, unless they don’t want to; simply reversing the sides (”try not to roll a 7 or 11″) is counterintuitive, especially for somebody who already knows how to play craps.

Second problem: completely random mechanics produce completely random results. Both sides of a conflict should have more agency than they do in the standard craps model.

There may be a way to solve these problems simultaneously, with a good add-on mechanic. For instance, say that each side of the conflict has limited resources with which to buy bar points (normally the role of the casino). You can take 2 or 12 for free, and spend to bar out a 3 or 8 or whatever–the closer to 7, the higher the cost. The problem with that, in turn, is that bar points are useless after the first roll, and it once again becomes a matter of chance leaning toward the opposition.

How else can we make manipulating craps resolution interesting? Swapping out dice? Buying rerolls? Standing bonus or penalty points for every roll?

Stuff on this weblog that I post goes under my Creative Commons BY-SA license, which basically means stripping everything away from its natural copyright except “give proper credit” and “license any derivative work the same way.” Your comments don’t fall under this license, because they’re attributed to you (that’s “otherwise noted,” as it says at the bottom of the page). However, if I take what you say in the comments and turn it into a new post, it does go under the license–under both our names.

I think it’s a good thing to put work under the CC license. When other people can derive new ideas from the things you make, the value of both your work and theirs increases. The license doesn’t prevent you from making money off your ideas, and it doesn’t allow anyone to claim your work as their own.

Of course, how I feel isn’t necessarily how everyone feels, and I don’t want to prevent people from participating here because of copyright quibbles. So here are the ground rules:

1. If you post a comment, you can add a note like “I’d prefer you not repost this,” and I (or any other potential admin) will consider it hands-off except for other responses in the comment thread. You retain all natural copyright privileges. Otherwise it’s fair game for reposting.
   1. Reposts of ideas will always be attributed to their original author, and that part of the post is licensed by them, BY-SA.
   2. Further discussion of those ideas in a post is licensed by the post’s author, BY-SA.
2. If you submit an entry via the “Submit Story” link, and it gets published here, it goes under a BY-SA license in your name.
   

You can read more stuff about copyright or the Creative Commons at their official sites, if this kind of thing interests you.

Otherwise, okay! Boring copyright stuff over! Let’s get back to talking about games.