Get the door, it's dominoes!

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Apr 3, 2022 5:42 pm
I'm toying with running Macabre Tales here, a one-on-one Lovecraftian RPG that uses dominoes for check resolution. In a nutshell, the game uses two sets of double-six dominoes. The player draws three for a "hand." When they face a check, they decide which domino from the hand to play, forcing them to gamble on how good of a domino to expend based on how dangerous the check might be if failed (and what may potentially lie ahead).

At any rate, I know GP does not support domino draws (at least not currently). So I'm wondering if a 2d6 roll might be substituted instead, with each d6 representing one half of a domino. The problem is that double-six dominoes have blanks, as well, so there are actually 7 potential halves to a specific domino (from blank to 6 pips). So maybe the roll is (1d6-1), (1d6-1)? That would generate a single domino.

The second issue with this form of emulation would be that there is no domino pool that depletes over time. E.g., if you rolled and got a 6/6 domino, you could conceivably roll again later and get another one, even if the first one is in your hand still. I don't think this would be game-breaking; it just removes some of the domino counting that is possible in the physical game.

So, here's a test to see if I can get some domino approximations generated:
Last edited April 3, 2022 5:44 pm

Rolls

creating a domino - ((1d6-1), (1d6-1))

(1d6-1) : (3) - 1 = 2

(1d6-1) : (5) - 1 = 4

Apr 3, 2022 5:43 pm
So, it worked, I think. I got a 2/4 domino.

I was hoping to experiment a bit further here, but it looks like rolls aren't allowed on reply posts?
Apr 3, 2022 5:45 pm
I also realize that it needs to be (1d7-1), (1d7-1) to allow a 6/6 to come up.
Apr 3, 2022 5:47 pm
Rolls have to be enabled for a thread.

You could just figure out what dominoes are in the pool, assign a number to each one and then roll for which ones are drawn, then taking out the ones that are already taken.

It's not super elegant but it should work
Apr 3, 2022 5:50 pm
User-definable card support has been raised, but we never really seem to get a good discussion going.

Cards would support this with the 28 possible combinations.

Public thread for card discussion.
Last edited April 3, 2022 5:52 pm
Apr 3, 2022 6:06 pm
bowlofspinach says:
Rolls have to be enabled for a thread.
Is that something I can enable for this thread, or is it done at the forum level? (If the latter, it would be nice to have a throwaway forum somewhere where people could experiment with different types of die rolls just to get the hang of the dice codes.)
bowlofspinach says:
You could just figure out what dominoes are in the pool, assign a number to each one and then roll for which ones are drawn, then taking out the ones that are already taken.

It's not super elegant but it should work
That's not a bad idea. I think 1d7-1 / 1d7-1 would be workable, too, but I'm not sure if it would monkey with the probabilities too much.
Apr 3, 2022 6:49 pm
It should be a checkbox if you edit the first post of the thread
Apr 4, 2022 3:54 am
bowlofspinach says:
Rolls have to be enabled for a thread.

You could just figure out what dominoes are in the pool, assign a number to each one and then roll for which ones are drawn, then taking out the ones that are already taken.

It's not super elegant but it should work
That's how I would do it, or maybe assign a card from the standard deck? Does the 'bag' of dominoes ever get to be depleted? Or are you putting them back in the bag after every use? Are what dominoes you have public knowledge?
Apr 4, 2022 2:15 pm
Yeah, in this game, the bag gets depleted, and your hand of three dominoes is visible to the GM. The discard pile gets returned to the bag once the bag is empty.

So, yeah, a custom card deck could totally work. I just don't think the site can handle that quite yet. But Bowlofspinach's workaround might work. Another option would be to assign a card from a deck of standard playing cards to each domino and draw those.

(The game asks for two sets of double-six dominoes, with the doubles removed from the second set. That yields 28 + (28 - 7) dominoes, or 49. Almost a perfect match for a 52-card deck with jokers removed.
Last edited April 4, 2022 2:17 pm

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