The Wondrous Wonk Wheel
In one of the earlier iterations of QuestRex I toyed around with a “universal table” (UTs) ala Marvel Superheroes and later versions of Gamma World. I built out the chart (below) and then came up with the idea for a nifty wheel players could used to zoom in on columns. I dubbed it the “Wondrous Wonk Wheel” and even built a paper version of it. PDFs of the files needed to print it out are included in this post.
UTs offer the promise of knowing a dice rolls success not as a binary succeed/fail but as a gradient of success or failures. Rolling a 19 yields much better results than rolling a 8 even if both are successful.
They also suffer from a number of problems:
- Player Unfamiliarity – Players don’t get them. They’re too rare for newbies to jump in and know what’s going on.
- Limited Granularity – You can only squeeze so many columns into a universal table and keep it manageable. This limits the nuance of modifiers. Many UTs opt for percentages instead of d20 as I did to give more range.
- Damage and Subsequent Rolls – If a player rolls a red result how will this affect any rolls based on that success like weapon damage, spell effect, etc.? This gets messy quickly.
- Compatibility – Very few systems use UTs so there’s no compatibility with the trove of existing content out there.
Anyhow, I experimented with it and ultimately abandoned it but who knows, maybe I’ll circle back to it one day.
Wonk Wheel Files
To make your very own Wondrous Wonk Wheel:
- Print out these files
- Cut off the extra paper around the wheels and the notch on the top wheel
- Drill a small hole in the center of both
- Use a small brass fastener or 3/16″ eyelets to hold them together
