Subitizing

Matt Miller

Today I happened across a concept for mental math that says people can grasp rather small numbers (<4) almost instantly, and was wondering if there was a way to apply that to gaming. (Subitizing) 

Last week, we played a FATE-based game with regular D6's, and the additional mental time to convert the different symbols to FATE outcomes was notable. FATE uses four dice, with a bell-curve of outcomes, but does it using 3 values, with 2 symbols (blanks as null, so a player just needs to 'subitize'). Rather than explicit counts, FATE dice make it possible to subitize pluses and minuses; a substantial portion of the time, there will be only 1 symbol to subitize as well.

Tom Vogt

I've done some extensive work on dice systems, including presenations. In general, comparison > addition > substraction > multiplication. FATE balances somewhere between as theoretically you need to do addition and substraction, but with the usual low numbers, it is basically instinctive, you don't actually "do the math", exactly due to the effect you describe.