[DL] Bigger dice or more of them?

[Andrew Ross <arosslaw@earthlink.net>]

Howdy.

I'm gearing up to run an 1890's Cthulhu game using the Deadlands rules.
I love the CoC setting and adventures, but can't stand the system, so
every now and then I try converting it over to yet another game system
and giving it a whirl. So far I've tried GURPS, Unisystem, Over the Edge
and Castle Falkenstein. While all worked to one degree or another, none
of them really grabbed me, so now its Deadlands turn.

I've got the Adios A-Migo dime novel which gives some nice conversion
notes in the back, but the statistic conversions are giving me some
pause. The dime novel gives a chart to match deadlands die types with
the CoC numbers, with a coordination of 1. BUT, it also says that you
can drop the die type by one and raise the coordination by +2, so an 18
can be 1d12, 3d10, or 5d8.

My problem, never having run Deadlands before, is I can't really tell
which is better. Obviously more dice means a better chance at an ace,
but a higher die type gives a larger range of numbers. My knee-jerk
response is to reduce everything 1 level and give it 3 dice, but that's
going to make everything look an awful lot alike.

So, I'm hoping those of you more familiar with the system, or those
who've done some conversion work yourselves, can help me out here. Is
lots of smaller dice better, or fewer big dice? The number of dice only
matter for trait checks, so for skills it would seem that bigger dice
would be better. What's the ratio of trait-to-skill checks, generally
speaking?

Thanks.

Andrew Ross (arosslaw@earthlink.net)