I’ve been listening to some FFG Star Wars podcasts, and I like the narrative dice system.

I’ve been listening to some FFG Star Wars podcasts, and I like the narrative dice system.

I’ve been listening to some FFG Star Wars podcasts, and I like the narrative dice system. However, I find that the rules are overly complicated and dice pools are a pain. Mostly, this problem of overly complicated character creation and rules is what’s drawn me to the 2d6 PbtA systems.

I’ve been running a Masks campaign for almost a year now, and I really like the failure, partial success, and success system, but I was wondering if the advantages and threats could be added to the system.

I think what’s stopping me from immediately introducing a 1d4 with Advantages on evens and Threats on odds is that the 7–9 range already represents a kind of Failure with Advantage or Success with Threat.

Any ideas as to whether this could add anything to a narrative dice system? I’m mostly thinking about implementing it with games like Masks, Monster of the Week, Impulse Drive, etc.

I’m not trying to insist that dice pools are dumb or that the 2d6 system is broken. I’m just thinking that I would like to see if Advantages and Threats could add anything to the narrative dice system. What do you think?

4 thoughts on “I’ve been listening to some FFG Star Wars podcasts, and I like the narrative dice system.”

  1. Hrmm, tricky. I like the Narrative Dice System too but feel like it is water and oil with apocalypse world stuff. 7-9 already gives you a mixed result. Adding mixed results to a 6- or a 10+ result is going to feel wrong, methinks. I suppose you could add advantages and Threats to only the full success or full failure to convert those more to yes, but and no, but.

    Still, it feels like you are just watering both of them down.

  2. I’m of the opinion that, in general, a hack or addition to a game should solve a problem. So the question then is: what problem (not necessarily in a negative sense) is there in Masks that would be solved with Advantages and Threats. Like you said, the 7-9 result already covers a lot of this ground.

  3. Use differently colored d6s. On a 7-9 result, red die high is an Advantage, black die high is a Threat. Has the added benefit of reducing cognitive load on the MC when it comes to adjudicating soft hit results.

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