If you are new to House Games and other World of Darkness systems, you may be unfamiliar with the way dice and skill checks are performed in this system. This page aims to explain everything you need to know about dice rolling.
World of Darkness (when dice are even being used) exclusively uses the D10 dice. If you are playing in person it is recommended to have between 10 and 20 physical dice available. If you are playing remotely any dice software would work. Typically, dice rolls will not need more then 10 dice. However Highrollers are a powerful lot, and 11-20 dice checks are not unheard of after only a few sessions.
Actions
Actions are anything that affect the direction and outcome of the story. Singing in the shower or driving a car are not really actions. The potential failure would not really impact the story. Singing to a packed stadium or going 120 down the highway while being shot at would be quite impactful if you fuck up. When there is doubt to your success, an action is used.
Rolling dice is not always needed. A good rule of thumb is as follows: If a potential failure isn’t interesting, it’s probably not needed. Maybe the character is doing something they’ve done a million times in a peaceful moment. For example: walking up stairs does not require a dexterity athletics check. Perhaps a potential failure would absolutely kill the pacing of the story if the Highrollers miss the next big clue. If the results wouldn’t create conflict or drive the story forward, it might not be even worth it. This is ultimately to the discretion of the Storyteller.
Thresholds
The goal when rolling is to try and get as success rolls as you can. The more success rolls, the better you perform an action. Whether or not a given individual dice succeeds is determined by the difficulty value.
A dice is a success if it rolls higher than the difficulty threshold. The more successes you roll determine how well you succeeded. One success on the roll means you just barely pulled it off. Three successes means you completely succeeded at your action. A 10 is always a success and a 1 is always a failure (more on 1s in a bit).
Usually the value of the difficulty is set by the Storyteller. By default the difficulty for any generic action is 6. Difficulty can range from 3 to 9. For example Difficulty 3 is riding bike for the hundredth time, and Difficulty 9 is like rocket science. A difficulty 6 action is neither super difficult or super easy to preform.
Difficulty can also be affected other factors. Specialization, injuries, trait buffs and debuffs are all common ways difficulty can be modified to be higher or lower.
Dice Pools and Succeeding.
Your dice pool is the number of dice you roll when making a given check. Typically a dice pool is composed of a relevant Attribute and Ability. Your combined score in the two category is the number of dice you roll. For example, let’s say you have a 2 in Firearms and 3 in Dexterity. If you wanted to fire a gun, (usually a difficulty 6 action) you would have a dice pool of 5 dice.
So you roll your 5 d10s and roll the following numbers: [10, 7, 6, 3, 2]. 10, 7, and 6 are all above or meet the difficulty threshold, which means you earned 3 successes. The Storyteller rules that you fire your gun and hit your target center of mass.
Let’s say you fire again. Once more you roll 5 d10s and roll [6, 5, 4, 4, 1]. Not only are 1s considered failures, they also cancel out one success (in this case the 6). You can think of 1s as a negative success. In this instance you fail. Nothing bad happens, you just fail your action.
A character who fails an action may be permitted to try again at the Storyteller’s discretion, but the Storyteller may increase the Difficulty by one for each unsuccessful attempt. This represents frustration under stress getting to you. Whether the difficulty increases is context dependent. If you’re trying to tell if someone is lying in ambush for example, not detecting one doesn’t make it more difficult to check again. However If you’re trying to pick a lock in an area teeming with security guards, failing on the first go around will put the squeeze on you.
Botching
So if 1s are “negative successes” what happens if you rolled so many 1s that were to have negative successes? What happens is you botch.
Botches represent having truly miserable bad luck with something. You try and and pick up a heavy weight and you completely tear a muscle. A round blows up in the chamber, sending shrapnel (that used to be your gun flying towards your face. Trying to talk down the suspicious cops goes so poorly he puts 3 in your stomach. Its up to the Storyteller what exactly happens in the case of a botch.
Contested Actions
There are situations in which you might be trying to use a skill against someone else. This can create a binary situation where only one person should be able to receive a success. This most common example is combat. If someone tries to stab you with a sword, and you try and parry with a knife, only one of you can succeed. This is a contested action. Other common occurrences are resisting powers, spells or Willpower’s.
When taking a contested action both parties roll. The successes of the loser are subtracted from those of the winner. The party with the greater number of successes is the victor. A tie goes to the defender (because the attacker has 0 successes). As with other actions, the Difficulty is 6 unless the rules or the Storyteller indicate otherwise.
Extended Actions
Sometimes actions aren’t just a one and done deal. Sometimes you need to do things over a long period of time. Tailing another car during rush-hour, performing a dark ritual, eavesdropping on a Board meeting from the room over, or running away from the cops are all examples of extended actions.
For these actions the difficulty threshold should be higher because you are attempting them over a long period of time. The storyteller should also give you only a limited number of rolls to roll to make the threshold. Keep in mind the long you roll the more likely it is a botch could occur.