Designing a Dice System That Feels Like Magic, Not Math

Eight years ago, my game was just a Dungeons & Dragons port. This is the story of how I threw out the math, cut the mechanic I loved most, and built a dice system that finally feels the way rolling dice is supposed to feel. In this Ship's Log I walk through every version of the Blueshiners dice system: the D20-plus-modifier days, the math-less experiments, exploding dice, the cascading mechanic I was in love with (and had to kill), and the one-die fix that solved everything. Blueshiners is a cooperative science-fantasy TTRPG about a found-family crew surviving in a doomed galaxy. This is a designer's-eye look at dice mechanics: keep-highest resolution, step dice, dice pools, target numbers, exploding vs. cascading dice, and why an intuitive system beats a merely fast one. If you design games (or just like thinking about why dice feel the way they do) this one's for you. 0:00 Consulting the Bones 0:37 Borrowed Engine: The D&D Port 1:47 The OGL Panic & Going Bespoke 2:44 When Math Killed the Magic 3:15 Back to Zero 3:44 The Math-less Quest 4:35 Why Keep-Highest Alone Failed 5:34 The Dice Pool Problem 6:28 Target Numbers & Challenge Scores 7:38 Exploding Dice (and a Death) 8:57 Cascading Dice: The Darling 10:09 Hypershift & Scrappy Heroism 11:38 Rolling to Defend 12:33 Kill Your Darlings 14:09 The One-Die Fix 14:42 What the Playtesting Showed 15:38 Does It Hide the Odds? 16:56 Knowing Your Fate 🎲 Playtest with us and join the crew: discord.gg/c2dqZ2xDeX 👀 Follow the game: blueshiners.com · @BlueshinersRPG 🏃‍➡️ Quick Start Rules: https://tinyurl.com/4tey8bym 🤓 Full Handbook: https://tinyurl.com/nffe92p6 📝 Pregen Character Sheets: https://tinyurl.com/39kmuwaj 🔔 New Ship's Log devlogs every other week, subscribe so you don't miss one. #TTRPG #GameDesign #TTRPGDesign #IndieTTRPG #DiceMechanics #Blueshiners