Fans of Enemy Gods, Cat and The Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men will recognize these guys. They’re Advantage Dice. I’m stealing them for Houses of the Blooded for two reasons. First, because they really do encourage player input; and second, because as “Style Dice,” they’ll encourage players to act like the ven.
For those of you who do not know what I’m talking about, here’s Advantage Dice.
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One of the most important elements of the Houses of the Blooded system is Advantage Dice. These are dice the GM hands out to players for showing initiative and for good roleplaying. Each Advantage Die is another die the player can roll for a chance of getting more effect.
Advantage Dice represent advantages your character has in any given risk. GMs should not be shy about giving Advantage Dice; they are here to reward good roleplaying, planning, and innovative thinking.
For example, a player says, “I have three advantages over my opponent. My character has a sword. Also, I’m on higher ground. Finally, my character has the sun behind him, shining in my opponent’s eyes.”
The GM agrees and says, “Okay. I’ll count the fact that you are armed and your opponent isn’t and the sun behind your back, but leave that ‘higher ground’ nonsense with Anakin at the lava. You have two advantages. You can roll two additional dice on your attack.”
In many ways, a character’s Virtues and Skills are like permanent Advantage Dice. Because a character has a past, he can use the skills he learned from that past as Advantage Dice.
A Note for GMs
Advantage Dice came out of a response to watching another system in action. (The system shall remain nameless, but its initials are DAD.) In that system, all the advantages a character could have were preloaded: right there on his sheet. The player didn’t have to think about how to gain bonuses because all his bonuses were already in front of him. Besides, the wimpy circumstantial bonus (+2) didn’t match the Feats he had on his sheet.
This led to the classic “I roll to hit” syndrome that drives me crazy. So, I decided to come up with something I liked more.
Advantage Dice make the player engage the world around him, make him look for any advantage his character can get. Rather than rely on his sheet, the player has to think outside his sheet and think of ways to gain advantages. The advantages aren’t front loaded and calculated ahead of time.
When all the thinking is already done for the player, he resorts to “I roll to hit.” He doesn’t even address the situation with an in-character voice. “I roll to hit.”
With advantage dice, he must think about the fight in-character. He must address the situation going on. If he just “rolls to hit,” he’s missing out on all the goodies. As the GM, it is your job to reward his creativity. Do it. You might be surprised at the response.
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Advantages in HotB
I’ll be changing the name of Advantage Dice to “Style Dice.” You get Style when you do cool shit. They don’t keep like Drama Dice from 7th Sea; they’re fire and forget. If you do something cool, I give you Style for that risk.
However…
Someone on RPG.net asked about clothes. Yes, your wardrobe is important. You can invest it with Style…