ThinkingSkull.com

As the Preview Release of Kindling Moon draws near, it was suggested to me that we needed something to not only show that we’re serious but to firmly point the finger at our intended competition. Not that it’s any big secret, but that would be anything ‘D’ followed by the number ‘twenty’. Since our system is designed to utilize one single set of polyhedral dice (and not to just take up room in the bag), the idea grew into “You’re going to need more than just this…” followed by a picture of a twenty-sider. So we did!

This isn’t to say that role-playing games using single-die mechanics are bad, it’s just that, as a factor of randomization, isn’t that a little stagnate? The time-tested option of adding or removing modifiers to either change the target number needed to roll or change the total number rolled is okay, but the randomness is still 1 out of 20 or 5%. Other systems use a single die type (ten-sider or six-sider) or multiples of the same dice to increase this fixed randomness, but you shouldn’t have to dump a barrel over and spend fifteen minutes counting pips.

Kindling Moon’s dynamic dice pool was designed to be the best of both worlds. More dice are fun to roll when you’ve earned them, but too many take too long to count and keep track of. With just a few easy rules, one set of dice can generate randomness of 1-100, but the chance of rolling higher decreases as the total goes up. We’re still waiting for someone to roll that perfect 100 and tell us the story of what their characters were doing when it happened.

The clock is ticking, the dice are being rolled, and the gauntlet has been thrown down.