On Dice

I recently played two games that were very heavily dice dependent and one I found the dice annoying - and the other the dice added a pleasing amount of randomness....

The first was  Elder Sign and the second was Roll Through The Ages - the bronze age although technically we were playing the free expansion "the late bronze age" it's a much more balanced game).

Now there very different games - one is Arkham horror lite well the other is Civilisation in 30 minutes and there are a lot of other differences but as I sat there trying to work why the dice in one where annoying me and in another they were not.  I think it hinges on one very big difference struck me....

In Elder sign i you roll dice to try and overcome a problem.   You either succeed and gain a reward - or fail and take a penalty.  And while the tasks come in stages you can not get partial credit -only clear 2 out of 3 stages it's still a fail and the next person will face all 3 stages again.

So very binary.  And succeeding was also a bit flat - after all - what had I actually done? 

In Roll Through The Ages - you roll your dice three times - keep some of them (have to keep others of them) and then use those dice to do stuff.  There are times that you get terrible turns - when you need food and rule no food at all.  Or when you roll a bunch of disasters.  But no matter what luck sends you - you get to do something even if it's not quite what you wanted.

I find one of these annoying and the other fun......

So in my opinion - succeed/fail is a bad mechanic where as "where do I go from here" is a good mechanic to use with dice.  And I shall do my best to remember that.