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The full register

29 entries, five sections

Every entry on the site, listed in register order. No dropdowns: each section below opens onto its own landing page.

Randomness

07 entries · Curves, flat lines, and what each one feels like.

001 Randomness Why 3d6 is not a d20 Same average, completely different game. 002 Randomness The flat line A single die is uniform: every result equally likely. 003 Randomness Adding dice narrows it Two dice make a triangle, three make a bell. 004 Randomness Advantage is a curve trick Rolling twice and taking the better is not a flat bonus — it is worth most in the middle of the range and almost nothing at the ends. 005 Randomness Exploding dice A die that re-rolls on its maximum has no upper bound. 006 Randomness Dice pools Count successes rather than sum faces. 007 Randomness The d100 illusion Percentile dice read as precise because they are granular.

Numbers

06 entries · Difficulty, budgets, and the arithmetic under a session.

008 Numbers What a difficulty number says A target number is a claim about how often the thing should happen. 009 Numbers Bonuses outrun the die When modifiers grow faster than the die's range, the roll stops mattering. 010 Numbers The treadmill If difficulty rises exactly as fast as the characters do, nothing has changed. 011 Numbers Resource budgets Spells, charges, hit points and luck are all the same kind of number: something spent between rests. 012 Numbers Degrees of success Reading the margin rather than the pass. 013 Numbers Opposed rolls Two rolls compared is a different distribution from one roll against a number, and it is slower.

Encounters

06 entries · What a fight costs before anybody rolls.

014 Encounters What a fight costs Encounter budgets price a fight before anybody rolls. 015 Encounters Action economy Four against one is not four times harder; it is a different problem. 016 Encounters The first round decides it In most systems the side that acts first with focus wins. 017 Encounters Attrition versus spike A long grind and a sudden burst produce the same average damage and completely different sessions. 018 Encounters Morale The rule that ends fights early. 019 Encounters The encounter that is not a fight Budgets assume violence.

The Sheet

05 entries · The character sheet as a piece of interface design.

020 The Sheet The sheet is an interface Everything a player does passes through one page. 021 The Sheet What belongs in the top third The things reached for every round versus the things reached for once a session, and why most sheets have that backwards. 022 The Sheet Derived values Every number computed from another number is a number that goes stale. 023 The Sheet Space for pencil A sheet is written on, erased and written on again. 024 The Sheet One page or four What actually fits, and what a second page costs in table time.

The Table

05 entries · Five people, one rulebook, and what actually happens.

025 The Table Two tables, one rulebook The same system produces different games in different rooms. 026 The Table The screen as a rule A referee screen is a mechanism: it hides information and makes some results renegotiable. 027 The Table Session shape Three or four hours has its own structure — the slow start, the middle, the thing that always overruns. 028 The Table From wargames Scale, facing, morale and the six-second round all came from moving blocks of troops. 029 The Table House rules Every table amends.