It seems like it's really just about not painstakingly playing out every instant of the job. Which is fine by me, since I just want to see the cool parts.
Obsessive attention to detail in those sorts of situations always just struck me as an opportunity to catch the players sleeping on something their characters would have taken care of anyway.
You could drop all the mechanics, but then you probably might as well just play D&D 5 and do heists there. From what I've heard of the game, I think the fortune roll is not a thing I would consider removing.
You could drop all the mechanics, but then you probably might as well just play D&D 5 and do heists there. From what I've heard of the game, I think the fortune roll is not a thing I would consider removing.
You could drop all the mechanics, but then you probably might as well just play D&D 5 and do heists there. From what I've heard of the game, I think the fortune roll is not a thing I would consider removing.
This is my thinking, though the setting does sound cool, so I'm still kind of interested regardless of how the mechanics turn me off
1) Players lay out a simple plan. Pretty much just answering the question of 'how do you get to your target'
2) DM rolls fortune dice to see how prepared their target happens to be. This is mainly because BitD has a focus on doing a bunch of jobs and this helps vary it up. There's no reason you can't remove this if you want a job to have a specific feel.
3) In a heist characters can tick off boxes for equipment whenever they need it up to a cap. This bypasses the 'of course my character would have brought X' issue heist games can get into.
4) In a heist characters can spend stress to have a flash back (more stress the less likely it is) in which they talk about prepwork they did for the heist. Possibly with or without a skill check. The easy example is that if caught the Mastermind might flashback to bribing that guard the night before. If his social roll is successful then the bribe took and so on.
Basically the goal is to get the players involved in creating a heist that feels like watching the movie montage of the crooks doing the job while someone explains how they perfectly planned for all these eventualities (until they run out of stress/majorly fuck up/run out of items to bring).
For my money this system works really well for the game. To the point where, for other games with small knick knacks, I'd be tempted to add the equipment system to other games I play.
It seems like it's really just about not painstakingly playing out every instant of the job. Which is fine by me, since I just want to see the cool parts.
Obsessive attention to detail in those sorts of situations always just struck me as an opportunity to catch the players sleeping on something their characters would have taken care of anyway.
That's pretty much exactly my thinking. If I'm gonna expect my players to have painstakingly planned out the mission, I'd better have painstakingly planned out what they're up against. And now the challenge of each mission starts with me poring over the details looking for the one little thing they forgot about - blech.
The Blades system does still encourage you to have a good plan and it also encourages you to look like badasses with the flashback and gear systems, so you've retroactively done exactly what you needed to do.
But it also encourages you to be ambitious scoundrels with a lot of luck and not much of a survival instinct. My favorite pair of modifiers to the engagement roll are "Is this operation particularly bold or daring? Take +1d" and "Is this operation overly complex or contingent on many factors? Take -1d." Now, there are other modifiers that can offset this so complex plans can still work, but that says a lot about what the game wants you to do.
You could drop all the mechanics, but then you probably might as well just play D&D 5 and do heists there. From what I've heard of the game, I think the fortune roll is not a thing I would consider removing.
You could drop all the mechanics, but then you probably might as well just play D&D 5 and do heists there. From what I've heard of the game, I think the fortune roll is not a thing I would consider removing.
This is my thinking, though the setting does sound cool, so I'm still kind of interested regardless of how the mechanics turn me off
The BitD setting isn't super innovative or interesting by itself, IMHO. It's the mechanics that are driving this setting that makes it such a darling rpg right now. "System Matters" and all that....
One of the things I love about Blades in the Dark is the concept of the "Crew" as a character sheet on its own. This isn't a new idea (various FATE games do this, Reign does this with their Company rules, etc.), but it's a great way to represent team resources that aren't necessarily the purview of a single player. This is something that we've always organically represented in our Shadowrun games (even so far as to assign numerical values for different affinities to factions and the like), but it's a nice mechanical way of supporting the type of gameplay they are going for.
The game makes a lot of smart choices. I'm not fond of the dicing system, but it's rare that I am fond of the dice mechanics in most RPGs.
NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
Anyone familiar with Fate Accelerated want to give this character build a look, and tell me if I'm doing it right? I just read through FAE, and am trying to get my brain wrapped around it.
For a generic fantasy game, going for a Tanky feel:
Name:. Vedric Rustbeard
Description: A hill dwarf, clad in splint mail, carrying a hand ax and oversized shield.
*ASPECTS*
High Concept: Shieldguard of the 3rd Ironbreaker Division
Trouble: Haunted by visions of war
Other: Throws himself into harm to save others
*APPROACHES*
Careful Fair (+2)
Clever Average (+1)
Flashy Mediocre (+0)
Forceful Good (+3)
Quick Fair (+2)
Sneaky Average (+1)
*STUNTS*
>Because I am trained as a Shieldguard, I get a +2 when I Forcefully defend when I put myself between harm and an ally.
>tbd
>tbd
You could punch up "Other" some. "Audacious defender of the common dwarf," or "No greater honor than to die for my brothers," or "C'mon you gnomes - you want to live forever?"
I generally like to make my High Concept something a little more specific to me. Maybe by dropping some personal adjectives in there or something.
I also typically make my Aspects in general something that can be said for maximum dramatic effect when it's used, which your trouble works well for but the other two kind of struggle at.
Otherwise, you seem to have the nuts and bolts down correctly.
tzeentchlingDoctor of RocksOaklandRegistered Userregular
edited February 2017
Completed the one-shot of my 7th Sea game!
When last we left off, my Vesten guildmaster and my companion's Castillan duelist had made short work of a pair of brute squads that the assistant to the Montaignian ambassador had tried to sic on us. Said henchman then pulled a pistol on me. I warned him that he could certainly shoot me, but that my friend would make sure he didn't last long if he did so. Instead, I convinced him to sit down and talk, and we proceeded to interrogate him, breaking his will with a good cop/bad cop routine. He spilled the beans on his boss, and we left for the palace to find the ambassador before he could carry out a nefarious plot - taking the henchman's gun as payment on the way out.
We made haste to the palace, where we met with minor obstacle after minor obstacle in getting to the correct room. I opened up a clear route for my companion by scattering a handful of Guilders, while he returned the favor with some secret Invisible College colleagues who were able to show me a servant's passageway that would get me there faster. We arrive in the room just in time to see the Ambassador slip some powder in a glass of wine and start to offer it to the obnoxious artist that we had heard was targeted for assassination. I intercept and distract said artist, taking the wine glass meant for him. What follows is several rounds of my companion and I trying to distract or otherwise play a shell game with glasses of wine which may or may not have poison in them, while the ambassador gets more and more upset that his plans are being foiled. He eventually proposes a toast - at which point he and the artist have what we believe are uncontaminated glasses, while I and my companion have the poisoned ones. My friend pretends to drink his, using some slight of hand, while I bluff and say that my Wyrd prevents me from drinking alcohol.
Eventually, the villain is out of raises and we have successfully saved the artist! He's taken aside and warned of the threat that he unknowingly avoided, and manages to stay alive the rest of the festival, preventing poor relations from developing between Avalon and Montaigne. The ambassador, of course, lives to plot another day, and if we were to keep the characters we might have to face him again. But we may be switching around GMs, and telling a different story next time, so who knows! It was fun to play this character, though, and to push the system to see how well I can resolve conflicts without fighting.
intro session of Dresden Files accelerated began last night to great success!
Setting: Mystic Falls, Maine (yes we stole the town name from Vampire Diaries and regret nothing)
*Stephen King voice* "Y'all going way up there, huh?"
Things on the list:
Vampires
Secret Societies
Fishmen
Black Magic
Things NOT on the list:
Faerie Courts
Sasquatch
The Cast:
Sandy Powers
HC: Action Wizard Historian!
Trouble: It's Always My Business
Other: Research Is My Weapon, Enemy of the "Order", My Little Brother Chet
Dirk Winters
HC: Publisher of Mystic Mysteries and Whack-Job
Trouble: I Need The Truth!
Other: Literal and Figurative Skeletons in the Closet
Richard Jones
HC: Mystic Falls' Only Deputy
Trouble: Self-Involved and Over-Confident
Other: My Trusty Six-Shooter
It was a fairly slow start since Richard's player is new to both Fate and the Dresden Files so we spent most of the evening getting characters generated, but we did establish a few things in the opening investigation: there's a mangled, unrecognizable body with its heart missing. Chet's high concept is The Only Junior Investigation Society Agent and town blabbermouth, and something took a bite out of Rick's shoulder outside Dirk's house.
I actually came up with Chet on the fly, and then halfway during the session when I was trying to figure out how to get my Indiana Jones-esque wizard involved I decided to make him Sandy's little brother. hilarity ensued.
I've gotta say, as skeptical I was of The Magicians (season one on Netflix) I'm really into it now. It makes me itchy for a gritty modern magic game that teleports to Faerun once in a while, but that might be too depressing
I just had two eleventh hour cancellations from a 4 member group for tonight's game.
Guess I'll just go back to building Star Wars characters.
:bro:
My AW game yesterday was canceled by a really shitty cancellation from one of my three players* and a brand-new D&D game tonight was canceled because the DM was sick last week and apparently D&D needs actual prep time.
*no I don't care that you can't remember a once/two week game and scheduled a date for the same day; also how is that possibly the fault of the person who got sick two weeks ago and had to cancel?
My Monday Star Wars game only makes about half the time. 3 players, since the 4th has decided to just not play but not tell me he doesn't want to play anymore. Two of the others are a couple and it works out that if one cancels, or has a bad day, etc, neither play, and they usually cancel literally last minute.
I'm kind of okay with it for this game because I want to play with friends, and it's online so there's no travel commitment, but it makes it hard to want to ask anyone else to join. I'd actually love a regular game as well.
however, the other cryptids are not. I fully expect to run into the Jersey Devil and Mothman
I just want there to be a moment where someone says something about sasquatch and everyone else in the scene just looks pointedly at them and shakes their heads in unison.
scene opens, camera facing an afternoon sky. a balding, heavyset man leans into the shot. "Well, shit," he says, his Maine drawl heavy. Another man leans in, he looks like Columbo with a giant cop mustache. "Jesus," he says. a third man leans in, a man in his early 40s holding a camera, salt and pepper hair. He snaps a photo.
"What is it this time? Werebears?" His tone shifts to mocking: "Bigfoot?"
"You know Bigfoot isn't real," says the man holding the camera. Next shot shows corpse, mangled beyond belief, a gaping hole in the chest.
Is there an index or a guide for all the dice commands that Geth has?
It's basically Orokos . com 's dice roller. The expressions appear to be behind the log in so in spoiler:
Dice Roller
Format
XdY to roll X dice of Y sides. Prefix N# to roll the dice N separate times.
Operators allowed are +, -, *, and / which follow order of operations. Division rounds down. Use parentheses if needed. Full format is any number of terms combined with the operators, where term is a literal number or a roll. N can be a term itself.
Combinatorics are possible as well. N-choose-K results can be of the form NcK, the value will be the number of combinations to choose K items from a set of N items, and return a random one of these sets in the details. (i.e. 4c2 might result in 6 [4c2=1,3]) Permutations are possible in the form NpK. These terms are useful for generating sequences.
Options
Append the following modifiers as desired, if using multiple then they must be added in the order below. Some combinations may be invalid.
rZ - reroll die if result is Z or lower (Brutal property in D&D, etc.)
roZ - reroll die only once if result is Z or lower
mZ - count result as Z if roll is lower than Z
eZ or oZ - extra / open roll when the die is Z or higher, extra grants one bonus roll only
kZ or lZ - keep the highest / lowest Z rolls, drop others
tZ - target number Z, count rolls that meet or exceed Z as successes (if Z > Y, implicit oY)
hZ - hits Z, count rolls that meet or exceed Z as successes, max roll grants bonus roll (implicit oY) (WoD)
xZ - hits Z, count rolls that meet or exceed Z as successes, max roll grants bonus success (Exalted)
uZ - under Z, count rolls that are equal to or under Z as successes
! - when at the end of any roll, turns on verbose mode (shows all dice rerolled and modified)
Other Dice
Special system dice are available as XdY, where Y is one of:
F - Fudge (-1, 0, +1)
C - Cthulhutech (d10: scoring for highest multiple or straight)
H - Hero System damage (d6: Stun is sum of dice and Body is X modified -1 or +1 for each 1 or 6 rolled)
Edge of the Empire - XeY, where Y is the first letter of the die type: Ability, Boost, Challenge, Difficulty, Force, Proficiency, or Setback.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3e - XwY, where Y is the color of the die: Characteristic (Blue), Expertise (Yellow), Challenge (Purple), Reckless (Red), Conservative (Green), Fortune (White), or Misfortune (blacK).
Other symbol dice are available as XxY, where Y is one of:
K - King of Tokyo die (d6: 1, 2, 3, Heart, Energy, Attack)
M - Mage Knight mana die (d6: Black, White, Red, Green, Blue, Gold)
R - Fate of the Norns runes (draw from 24 runes)
Double Cross dice are available as XxxY to roll X dice (d10s) with a crit threshold of Y. Takes the highest single result, unless one or more dice are Y or higher. The result is increased by 10 and the dice Y or higher are rerolled and the process repeated.
Examples
D&D: 2#1d20+6 close blast 3 vs Reflex; (1d6+4)/2 damage, 2d20k1+8 Oath of Enmity attack
SR3: 5d6t8 Electronics 5 vs TN 8, 4d6o6k1 Stealth 4 open roll
WoD: 7d10o9h7 Seven dice, hits on 7+, roll again on 9+
Fudge: 4dF fudge dice! (-4 to +4)
Cthulhutech: 3dC+7 Marksmanship
Hero System: 8.5dH damage roll with a half-die!
Edge of the Empire: 2eA+1eP+3eD 2 Ability 1 Proficiency 3 Difficulty dice
WFRP 3e: 2wB+1wY+1wP+1wK 2 Characteristic 1 Expertise 1 Challenge 1 Misfortune dice
Double Cross: 6xx8 Pool of 6 dice, critical 8+
Pretty sure Geth doesn't do all of those but the formats tend to be the same as Infidel is behind both of those rollers.
Posts
Obsessive attention to detail in those sorts of situations always just struck me as an opportunity to catch the players sleeping on something their characters would have taken care of anyway.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
This is my thinking, though the setting does sound cool, so I'm still kind of interested regardless of how the mechanics turn me off
1) Players lay out a simple plan. Pretty much just answering the question of 'how do you get to your target'
2) DM rolls fortune dice to see how prepared their target happens to be. This is mainly because BitD has a focus on doing a bunch of jobs and this helps vary it up. There's no reason you can't remove this if you want a job to have a specific feel.
3) In a heist characters can tick off boxes for equipment whenever they need it up to a cap. This bypasses the 'of course my character would have brought X' issue heist games can get into.
4) In a heist characters can spend stress to have a flash back (more stress the less likely it is) in which they talk about prepwork they did for the heist. Possibly with or without a skill check. The easy example is that if caught the Mastermind might flashback to bribing that guard the night before. If his social roll is successful then the bribe took and so on.
Basically the goal is to get the players involved in creating a heist that feels like watching the movie montage of the crooks doing the job while someone explains how they perfectly planned for all these eventualities (until they run out of stress/majorly fuck up/run out of items to bring).
For my money this system works really well for the game. To the point where, for other games with small knick knacks, I'd be tempted to add the equipment system to other games I play.
That's pretty much exactly my thinking. If I'm gonna expect my players to have painstakingly planned out the mission, I'd better have painstakingly planned out what they're up against. And now the challenge of each mission starts with me poring over the details looking for the one little thing they forgot about - blech.
The Blades system does still encourage you to have a good plan and it also encourages you to look like badasses with the flashback and gear systems, so you've retroactively done exactly what you needed to do.
But it also encourages you to be ambitious scoundrels with a lot of luck and not much of a survival instinct. My favorite pair of modifiers to the engagement roll are "Is this operation particularly bold or daring? Take +1d" and "Is this operation overly complex or contingent on many factors? Take -1d." Now, there are other modifiers that can offset this so complex plans can still work, but that says a lot about what the game wants you to do.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
The BitD setting isn't super innovative or interesting by itself, IMHO. It's the mechanics that are driving this setting that makes it such a darling rpg right now. "System Matters" and all that....
The game makes a lot of smart choices. I'm not fond of the dicing system, but it's rare that I am fond of the dice mechanics in most RPGs.
One roll came up a six (and it was a crit), maybe 3 partial successes and a whole lotta fails.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Name:. Vedric Rustbeard
Description: A hill dwarf, clad in splint mail, carrying a hand ax and oversized shield.
*ASPECTS*
High Concept: Shieldguard of the 3rd Ironbreaker Division
Trouble: Haunted by visions of war
Other: Throws himself into harm to save others
*APPROACHES*
Careful Fair (+2)
Clever Average (+1)
Flashy Mediocre (+0)
Forceful Good (+3)
Quick Fair (+2)
Sneaky Average (+1)
*STUNTS*
>Because I am trained as a Shieldguard, I get a +2 when I Forcefully defend when I put myself between harm and an ally.
>tbd
>tbd
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I also typically make my Aspects in general something that can be said for maximum dramatic effect when it's used, which your trouble works well for but the other two kind of struggle at.
Otherwise, you seem to have the nuts and bolts down correctly.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Florida Man assaults guards with golf club, steals rare lawn gnome
Florida Man destroys police car with PBR can
When last we left off, my Vesten guildmaster and my companion's Castillan duelist had made short work of a pair of brute squads that the assistant to the Montaignian ambassador had tried to sic on us. Said henchman then pulled a pistol on me. I warned him that he could certainly shoot me, but that my friend would make sure he didn't last long if he did so. Instead, I convinced him to sit down and talk, and we proceeded to interrogate him, breaking his will with a good cop/bad cop routine. He spilled the beans on his boss, and we left for the palace to find the ambassador before he could carry out a nefarious plot - taking the henchman's gun as payment on the way out.
We made haste to the palace, where we met with minor obstacle after minor obstacle in getting to the correct room. I opened up a clear route for my companion by scattering a handful of Guilders, while he returned the favor with some secret Invisible College colleagues who were able to show me a servant's passageway that would get me there faster. We arrive in the room just in time to see the Ambassador slip some powder in a glass of wine and start to offer it to the obnoxious artist that we had heard was targeted for assassination. I intercept and distract said artist, taking the wine glass meant for him. What follows is several rounds of my companion and I trying to distract or otherwise play a shell game with glasses of wine which may or may not have poison in them, while the ambassador gets more and more upset that his plans are being foiled. He eventually proposes a toast - at which point he and the artist have what we believe are uncontaminated glasses, while I and my companion have the poisoned ones. My friend pretends to drink his, using some slight of hand, while I bluff and say that my Wyrd prevents me from drinking alcohol.
Eventually, the villain is out of raises and we have successfully saved the artist! He's taken aside and warned of the threat that he unknowingly avoided, and manages to stay alive the rest of the festival, preventing poor relations from developing between Avalon and Montaigne. The ambassador, of course, lives to plot another day, and if we were to keep the characters we might have to face him again. But we may be switching around GMs, and telling a different story next time, so who knows! It was fun to play this character, though, and to push the system to see how well I can resolve conflicts without fighting.
Local family disappears
Rolling brown outs strike Orlando
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Reward Offered In Case of Missing Best Doggie
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Setting: Mystic Falls, Maine (yes we stole the town name from Vampire Diaries and regret nothing)
*Stephen King voice* "Y'all going way up there, huh?"
Things on the list:
Vampires
Secret Societies
Fishmen
Black Magic
Things NOT on the list:
Faerie Courts
Sasquatch
The Cast:
Sandy Powers
HC: Action Wizard Historian!
Trouble: It's Always My Business
Other: Research Is My Weapon, Enemy of the "Order", My Little Brother Chet
Dirk Winters
HC: Publisher of Mystic Mysteries and Whack-Job
Trouble: I Need The Truth!
Other: Literal and Figurative Skeletons in the Closet
Richard Jones
HC: Mystic Falls' Only Deputy
Trouble: Self-Involved and Over-Confident
Other: My Trusty Six-Shooter
It was a fairly slow start since Richard's player is new to both Fate and the Dresden Files so we spent most of the evening getting characters generated, but we did establish a few things in the opening investigation: there's a mangled, unrecognizable body with its heart missing. Chet's high concept is The Only Junior Investigation Society Agent and town blabbermouth, and something took a bite out of Rick's shoulder outside Dirk's house.
I actually came up with Chet on the fly, and then halfway during the session when I was trying to figure out how to get my Indiana Jones-esque wizard involved I decided to make him Sandy's little brother. hilarity ensued.
it should be an exciting session 2!
Over my dead body.
Please tell me that this is a hard no. Like leprechauns in Buffy.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I just had two eleventh hour cancellations from a 4 member group for tonight's game.
Guess I'll just go back to building Star Wars characters.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
:bro:
My AW game yesterday was canceled by a really shitty cancellation from one of my three players* and a brand-new D&D game tonight was canceled because the DM was sick last week and apparently D&D needs actual prep time.
*no I don't care that you can't remember a once/two week game and scheduled a date for the same day; also how is that possibly the fault of the person who got sick two weeks ago and had to cancel?
Alas, tonight we rolled +Life and got a 4.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
yes, Sasquatch is on the "hard no" list
however, the other cryptids are not. I fully expect to run into the Jersey Devil and Mothman
I'm kind of okay with it for this game because I want to play with friends, and it's online so there's no travel commitment, but it makes it hard to want to ask anyone else to join. I'd actually love a regular game as well.
I just want there to be a moment where someone says something about sasquatch and everyone else in the scene just looks pointedly at them and shakes their heads in unison.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
scene opens, camera facing an afternoon sky. a balding, heavyset man leans into the shot. "Well, shit," he says, his Maine drawl heavy. Another man leans in, he looks like Columbo with a giant cop mustache. "Jesus," he says. a third man leans in, a man in his early 40s holding a camera, salt and pepper hair. He snaps a photo.
"What is it this time? Werebears?" His tone shifts to mocking: "Bigfoot?"
"You know Bigfoot isn't real," says the man holding the camera. Next shot shows corpse, mangled beyond belief, a gaping hole in the chest.
Mr. Splugorth's Millions Mission.
Really I'm just brainstorming SW:Rifts ideas but that's at the top of my list.
This is how we wound up playing Fiasco that couple of times and it has yet to disappoint
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
It's basically Orokos . com 's dice roller. The expressions appear to be behind the log in so in spoiler:
Format
XdY to roll X dice of Y sides. Prefix N# to roll the dice N separate times.
Operators allowed are +, -, *, and / which follow order of operations. Division rounds down. Use parentheses if needed. Full format is any number of terms combined with the operators, where term is a literal number or a roll. N can be a term itself.
Combinatorics are possible as well. N-choose-K results can be of the form NcK, the value will be the number of combinations to choose K items from a set of N items, and return a random one of these sets in the details. (i.e. 4c2 might result in 6 [4c2=1,3]) Permutations are possible in the form NpK. These terms are useful for generating sequences.
Options
Append the following modifiers as desired, if using multiple then they must be added in the order below. Some combinations may be invalid.
rZ - reroll die if result is Z or lower (Brutal property in D&D, etc.)
roZ - reroll die only once if result is Z or lower
mZ - count result as Z if roll is lower than Z
eZ or oZ - extra / open roll when the die is Z or higher, extra grants one bonus roll only
kZ or lZ - keep the highest / lowest Z rolls, drop others
tZ - target number Z, count rolls that meet or exceed Z as successes (if Z > Y, implicit oY)
hZ - hits Z, count rolls that meet or exceed Z as successes, max roll grants bonus roll (implicit oY) (WoD)
xZ - hits Z, count rolls that meet or exceed Z as successes, max roll grants bonus success (Exalted)
uZ - under Z, count rolls that are equal to or under Z as successes
! - when at the end of any roll, turns on verbose mode (shows all dice rerolled and modified)
Other Dice
Special system dice are available as XdY, where Y is one of:
F - Fudge (-1, 0, +1)
C - Cthulhutech (d10: scoring for highest multiple or straight)
H - Hero System damage (d6: Stun is sum of dice and Body is X modified -1 or +1 for each 1 or 6 rolled)
Edge of the Empire - XeY, where Y is the first letter of the die type: Ability, Boost, Challenge, Difficulty, Force, Proficiency, or Setback.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3e - XwY, where Y is the color of the die: Characteristic (Blue), Expertise (Yellow), Challenge (Purple), Reckless (Red), Conservative (Green), Fortune (White), or Misfortune (blacK).
Other symbol dice are available as XxY, where Y is one of:
K - King of Tokyo die (d6: 1, 2, 3, Heart, Energy, Attack)
M - Mage Knight mana die (d6: Black, White, Red, Green, Blue, Gold)
R - Fate of the Norns runes (draw from 24 runes)
Double Cross dice are available as XxxY to roll X dice (d10s) with a crit threshold of Y. Takes the highest single result, unless one or more dice are Y or higher. The result is increased by 10 and the dice Y or higher are rerolled and the process repeated.
Examples
D&D: 2#1d20+6 close blast 3 vs Reflex; (1d6+4)/2 damage, 2d20k1+8 Oath of Enmity attack
SR3: 5d6t8 Electronics 5 vs TN 8, 4d6o6k1 Stealth 4 open roll
WoD: 7d10o9h7 Seven dice, hits on 7+, roll again on 9+
Fudge: 4dF fudge dice! (-4 to +4)
Cthulhutech: 3dC+7 Marksmanship
Hero System: 8.5dH damage roll with a half-die!
Edge of the Empire: 2eA+1eP+3eD 2 Ability 1 Proficiency 3 Difficulty dice
WFRP 3e: 2wB+1wY+1wP+1wK 2 Characteristic 1 Expertise 1 Challenge 1 Misfortune dice
Double Cross: 6xx8 Pool of 6 dice, critical 8+
Pretty sure Geth doesn't do all of those but the formats tend to be the same as Infidel is behind both of those rollers.