Rolling 1 on wild dice

[Freakazoitt 0]

The rules say that when a "1" result happen on a wild dice, the largest dice roll must be subtracted from the dicepool (and also not count that 1). And with the repeated roll of 1, a critical failure occurs (or how GM decided). But why roll the wild dice again? With 6 roll it is clear - to increase the total rolls result. And what about 1 roll? Roll the dice just to check if 1 comes up again? Sorry for the nagging, but isn't this a time wasting?

 

[Grimace 34]

I believe it was done because the "1 on the Wild Die" turned into such a problematic aspect for some.

I always worked with the "Roll a 1 on the Wild Die, subtract the highest die rolled with".  I went further and said that if the result of that subtraction resulted in a success anyway, play went on normally.  If it resulted in a failure by missing the result by a few, play went on normally but it was a failure.  If it resulted in near zero (say single digit when rolling 4D or so), I worked it as a "failure with consequence".  

Other people, though, viewed the "1 on the Wild Die" as a way to screw over the players.  Someone rolled a one, the GM thought of the worst possible thing that could happen and implemented it.  

That resulted in people feeling the Wild Die was broken.  Oh, they liked it when they got the exploding 6, but they hated it when they got the 1.

So the "new" West End Games re-designed the Wild Die slightly.  They kept the exploding 6, and they kept the 1 being the "remove highest die", but in order to stop the few GMs who used every 1 as a way to cripple the plans of the player, they made it so the occurrence of such a practice could ONLY happen if 1 was rolled TWICE.  So you basically had to "verify" that it was a terrible failure.  If it wasn't "verified", you only lost the highest die (and the wild die).  

Yes, it means rolling the die again, which is kind of silly, but it was done to as a means to protect the integrity of the Wild Die, while mitigating the heavy-handedness of some GMs.

[Durran 25]

I tend to go by Grimace's suggestion more or less.