12DR Explained: 4 of 4

The Dice allow you to do things like Open, Move, Search, Help and Attack, but punish you when you roll below 9 (see post 3 of 4). WARNING: there’s a lot of rolling. If you’re doing something, you must roll. If you chose to do nothing, cool, don’t roll. However, if it is your turn, you must roll at least once before passing the turn to the next player. Why? In both cases, active and passive, you must check to see if The Dark has noticed you and reacted. If you roll a sum of 9 or higher, you succeed and all is well. If you roll below 9, The Dark reacts. You must draw a Skull.

Twelve Dark Rooms and The Door That Wasn’t There Before both utilize the sum probabilities of three six-sided dice (3d6) as the framework for avoiding Skull cards and finding Hand cards, because rolling multiple dice and summing the results approaches a ‘normal distribution’ or ‘bell-shaped curve’ when rolled and summed over and over and over and over again during a single game or, especially, many rolls across several games. Thus, the probabilities make for less random game play. For example, if rolling only 2d6 (two six-sided dice) the entire game, the majority of rolls can be expected to come up 7 as this total is most common when summing 2d6. Less common is a roll-sum of 6 or 8, less likely still, a roll of 5 or 9, 4 or 10, 3 or 11 down to the least likely roll-sum of 2 or 12. Therefore, poking around In The Dark rolling 2d6 is somewhat suicidal if ‘safe’ is designated as any roll-sum of 9 or better.

Improve your chances by getting a light and keeping it all costs, since rolling 3d6 will most likely result in a roll-sum of 10 or 11. Slightly less likely is a roll-sum of 9 or 12. Taken together, interestingly, totals of 9, 10, 11 and 12 make up almost 50% of the probable roll-sums of 3d6, hence 12DR’s consistent cutoff score of below 9 as unsafe and above 12 as finding something (if you declare that you’re searching). So, if you have a light, you’re pretty safe. Should you be so lucky as to gain the opportunity to roll 4d6 (say, attacking a former friend wielding both flashlight and the Hand Axe), your most common roll-sum will be 14 or very near it. And if you’d like to play it safe on your turn (say your former friend is trying to attack you wielding flashlight and axe), roll to Hide by casting 5d6 as your most common roll-sum will be 17 or 18. The primary purpose of rolling, then, is to model risk-taking as players explore the Twelve Dark Rooms.

Triggers. Ones and triples ‘trigger’ special events. Ones usually indicate the loss of Vitals. Since each player only gets ten of these (an indication of life and health), it is advisable to hang on to them as best you can. Numerous Skull cards indicate something bad happening each time you, or sometimes even another player, roll a 1. And while you may forget to remove one of your vitals, you can count on a helpful fellow player to remind you. Certainly, then, it is just ‘good manners’ to do the same for them, right? Triples are reserved for amazing feats such as battering open a locked door or banishing an attacking Lurker. It is impossible to roll a triple while stumbling around in the dark (2d6) and possible, though unlikely, when you have a light (3d6).* It is far easier to enlist the help of another player in the same room with you. Even if you’re both in the dark, you’re rolling 4d6, much more likely to get a triple. Now, with triggers, good and bad things can happen at the same time. Let’s say you and a friend decide to roll to smash open a door. You have a light (3d6) but she doesn’t (2d6). However, she has the Sledge Hammer (+1d6). So, using your light and her hammer, the two of you roll 3d6 each or 6d6 total. You can bet there’s a triple in there most every time. But, while you roll a 3,3,4 for a total of 10 (safe), your friend rolls 1,1,3 for a total of 5 (oops! ...and even with shadowing your light, she is only able to add your lowest die of 3 for a total of 8). The door is slammed open on the triple 3s, but your friend must draw a Skull card. Since you’re in the same room with her, it may affect you as well. For that matter, you might have both rolled below 9 and tripled on 1s. The result on the door is the same, smashed open, but both of you must draw Skulls and perhaps either or both might lose vitals due to rolling 1s. To make a further point, in all other instances of players rolling together, the object is to combine roll-sums in some way. When this happens, both players must roll 9 or better in order to contribute to the total roll-sum. Any player rolling below 9 cannot contribute to the total and must draw a Skull immediately. Clear as mud, right? No worries. You’ll pick it up quickly.* Your first game may be a slow slog of two hours or so, but subsequent games, and play-test experience bears this out, will hover at an hour of quick, back-stabbing fun. The first game is even faster if at least one of the players (I’m looking at you Host!) actually reads ALL the rules and suggestions in the Rule Book.

Turn-Taking allows an orderly flow of “control” from one player to the next. Players can continue rolling declared actions until one of three conditions are met: 1) roll below 9 and draw a Skull; 2) move into a new room; or 3) roll at least once and pass the turn to the next player clockwise.

To my mind, turn-taking has been an overlooked but crucial difference between competitive tabletop games and cooperative role-playing games. Turn-taking seems to be so ingrained with our game-creation and game-play that many would-be role-players balk when it comes to playing-off one another, competing for attention or asserting control in the ‘game space.’ Indeed, the invention of the non-player referee or ‘Game Master’ (GM) to adjudicate player interactions with one another and the game-space is one of the first hurdles non-RPG players face. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “So the GM is like some little ‘god’ that can make anything happen at any time? How’s that a game?” After some discussion of “make-believe with a few rules” has passed back and forth, this same would-be player, still unsatisfied, picks up his dice and asks, “So, who goes first?” It is as if the need for intractable rules and strictly defined turns is essential for strategic play. The primary idea behind my original Portals & Chambers game (see previous 'explained' posts) was a GM-less dungeon crawl. Solving the turn-taking versus interactive play problem lay at the core of my dice-system as well as the introduction of “turn-taking with between-turn play.”

Between-Turn Play allows players to participate and influence the flow of the game when it is not their turn. The range of ‘between turn antics’ is somewhat defined by the group’s imagination and mutual consent. The Rule Book offers some ‘starter’ antics—the bulk of which come under the dubious heading, ATTACK, while others can be gleaned from the Example Play at the end of the book. It is here, in between-turn play, that the bulk of the game’s ‘strategy’ lies. For example, you can attack or help others in the same room with you, or you can shadow another player who has a light—move when they move; search when they search—adding their lowest die to your roll. You can intimidate others, threaten them, plead with them, and/or bribe them, so long as they’re in the same room (or at the same door) with you. Remember, however, all these things you can do to others can also be done to you. So, while it may seem like a bunch of random rolls with little or no strategy, in truth, it is not. Twelve Dark Rooms is as much a psychological strategy game as poker. Thus, your between-turn antics and strategies are your secret weapons for winning the game. There is no HAND card another player has that you cannot TAKE. No action they wish to do that you cannot THWART. Your risk is rolling below 9 and drawing a SKULL yourself, or being in the same room with someone who does—potentially making an enemy for life. BE BRAVE! It’s just a game, right?

* If you’d like to calculate the probabilities for the above events, begin with is Mr. Ekted. He offers a beautifully simple and elegant explanation. I almost believe I understand. Kudos, sir.