What is Shattered Vistas?

[Willow]

Shattered Vistas:

The core mechanic of Shattered Vistas is that everything is an opposed roll of d6s.  The die pool is typically Stat + Modifiers + Reserves Spent.  Any roll of 4 or above is a success, and 6s rolled have some sort of extra effect.

There are two types of rolls:

Task Rolls are basically task resolution.  If it's between two characters, they secretly write down the Reserves they are spending, and then reveal and roll.  If it's between a person and 'the world' (picking a lock, crossing a river, searching for traps) the GM has a die-pool equal to the Reality Shard's Dharma Level (i.e. how much this place sucks).  The GM can spend his Kharma to increase this die pool.  After he does that, THEN the player decides what kind of Reserve dice he wants to spend.

Here's a neat trick with this:  suppose a master lockpicker is picking a masterpiece lock.  The Dharma level is 3, so the GM rolls 3 dice.  But suppose the GM wants this lock to be particularly challenging (either because he wants to burn out the player's dice, or because his notes say it's a master lock, and he doesn't think it's "realistic" to have a 3 die master lock, or whatever.)  So he spends 5 Kharma, and now it's an 8 die lock.

The winner is whoever rolls more successes.  I'm thinking of a light-stakes method, but I'm not sure how much I want to veer in either way.  I'm also thinking of a traditional narration rights split (but perhaps a campaign option where the players get a 'Narration Reserve')
Also, both participants do damage to each other.  The winner does damage equal to the number of net successes they rolled, plus the number of 6s they rolled.  The loser does damage equal to the number of 6s they rolled.  Damage can represent physical wounds, mental doubt, or fraying of one's soul, or myriad other things.  There's some armor, but after that's applied, each point of damage translates to a -1 die to all rolls.

If there's absolutely no way that either side can see how damage could be applied, the winner gets bonus dice to their next roll against the loser equal to (Winner's net successes, plus winner's 6s rolled, minus loser's 6s rolled- if that's negative, nobody gets anything)

Extended Conflicts:

In an extended conflict, both sides (or multiple participants on each side) secretly pick a Maneuver each round, and write down their reserve expenditures.  Extended conflicts are always only between characters, not characters and the world.  (I'm still sketchy on whether or not I'm going to allow writing up innanimate objects as NPCs.  Pro:  It lets there be more variety for conflicts, and it certainly has a whole 'hostile animism' vibe.  Con:  It will require some massive alterations for the maneuvers.)

One important thing to note is that Extended Conflicts do not have stakes; individual Maneuvers have stakes.  Most of the time, it's just 'do damage to your opponent' or some tactical variant, but there's a whole class of Maneuvers that have the potential to end the conflict in one way or the other.  (More on this later.)

So you reveal what everyone has, you roll the dice, and you apply the results of your maneuvers.  You keep going until someone manages to polish off the conflict.  Essentially, it's the Task rules, but drawn out to facilitate tactical thinking.

[Willow]

How the Maneuvers Work:

Each Maneuver has a number of components:  a success result, a '6' result, additional bonuses and drawbacks, and some keywords.

Take the typical attack maneuver: it's exactly what's used in the Task Resolution.  You do damage equal to your net successes, and you do damage equal to your 6s rolled, no matter what.  It has the ATTACK keyword, and either the PHYSICAL, MENTAL, or SPIRITUAL keyword (which affects which trait you roll, what kind of damage it does, and what sort of armor applies to it.)

There's the typical defense maneuver:  Any net successes you get translate to damage reduction, and any 6s you roll also translate to damage reduction.  (So supposing you win, but your opponent rolled 10 6's (!) your net successes and 6s would subtract from that.  If you lost, your 6s still subtract from incoming damage.)  It has the DEFENSE keyword, and either the PHYSICAL, MENTAL, or SPIRITUAL keyword.  (The successes you roll automatically oppose whatever maneuver your opponents throw at you, but the extra successes and 6s only apply against the chosen type of damage.)

There's also a Maneuver maneuver; which gives you bonus dice to future actions.  (Essentially the 'no damage' outcome of a Task Resolution; this is in here so people can do things like 'I sneak up on him and then stab him in the back,' but there's some other cool tricks.

Then there's the conflict ending maneuvers- an Escape that gets you out of battle, a Finish Foe that takes an enemy out of the battle, a Withdraw for villains (pretty nasty- after they've reduced a character to a negative base die pool, they can leave if they win the roll AND gain back Kharma equal to the d6s rolled.  Helpful for those villains that like to see their victims suffer, and fight another day.)

So here's the part I'm really grooving out to:

There's a set of universal maneuvers that everyone knows (probably Attack, Defend, Maneuver, Escape, and Finish Foe, with PHYSICAL and MENTAL variants for those that need it, and a SPIRITUAL variant for Defend.)

Then, the rest of your maneuvers are customizable.  This is a big part of designing your character.  Each maneuver costs you a Power (sort of like D&D feats), and you build it off a list of base maneuvers, 6 results, bonuses (which come with die pool penalties) and drawbacks (which give die pool bonuses).

So you might have as a maneuver:

Defensive Blow (ATTACK, defend, PHYSICAL):  Net successes do physical damage to the opponent.  Any d6s rolled count as Physical damage reduction.

Or:

Mind Blade Strike:  (ATTACK, PHYSICAL, spiritual):  Net successes do physical damage to the opponent.  Any d6s rolled count as spiritual damage to the opponent.

Or:

Scathing Remark (ATTACK, MENTAL, physical): Net successes do mental damage to the opponent.  Any d6s rolled count as physical damage to the opponent.

Or:

Riposte: (DEFEND, maneuver, PHYSICAL):  Net successes count as physical damage reduction.  Any d6s rolled give you bonus dice to your next action against the same opponent.

So building your own maneuvers is a major part of character generation.  The rules are more complex than that (more options and stuff), and I haven't completely written them up yet, but that's the gist.

[Willow]

The Big Game Structure:

So there's this Reality Shard.  It's a little pocket dimension (because the rules of reality that used to hold things together just don't work anymore.)  The Shard has a Dharma level.  That's how bad things are.  Suppose the Dharma level is 5.  The GM's basic die pool is five.  Out there in this shard, there are 5 Samsara Singularities.  Maybe they're people or monsters with a Samsara Shard in them and need killing.  Maybe the Singularity doesn't physically manifest; it exists as a permeable condition in the world that makes life suck.  Example:  After all other factors, half of the harvest withers and dies.

To fight a monster/corrupt person, the PCs need to figure out where it lives, go through it's lair, kill it, and take it's stuff.
To fight a condition, the PCs need to do stuff to mitigate the effects of the condition, thereby weakening it to the point where they can confront it and kill it (and if it has anything, take it's stuff.)

Also, for each point of Dharma in a Reality Shard, the GM gets to assign a special power to the Shard.

(I'm looking at using the something like the Quest frameworks from Agon to add more detail to these Samsara Singularities.  I've recently discovered Agon, and I think there's a lot I can learn from that game.)

To the player characters go along, doing stuff, merrily spending their reserves along the way.  Simultaneously, the GM is burning through his own reserves.

Once the players confront and defeat the Samsara Singularity, all the reserves refresh (including the GM's- note that this is the only way for players to get reserve points back, and the only other way for the GM is the Withdraw Maneuver.)  The player characters gain experience (this is also the only way to gain xp, by defeating a Singularity), and the Dharma level of the Reality Shard reduces by one.  If the Dharma level is reduced to zero, the Reality Shard merges with another Reality Shard of the players' choice.

(Yes, it's possible to get to a point where the party has spent all of their reserves, is really wounded, and can't handle anything the GM throws at them.  Game over man, game over.)

So you'll note that the PCs actually increase in power over time, whereas the power of their opposition decreases.  (The singularities themselves get tougher the further down one goes, but the loss of a Dharma point for the GM is pretty big.)  That's intentional.

The game has a setting called the Confrontation Level, which starts at 1.  After a certain number of Dharma Confrontations (say five or so), the Confrontation Level goes up by 1.  This does a number of things:
Raises the cap on certain PC and NPC abilities.
Increases the GM's Kharma Reserve, and how tough they can make their adversaries.
Increases the Dharma level of all Reality Shards in play by 1.  (If this increases a Shard's Dharma level to 11, the Reality Shard ceases to be, and is forever lost.)
Raises the range of Reality shards the GM is allowed to set for new Reality Shards encountered in play.

So the idea is that game play is similar to playing a computer game like Final Fantasy:  When the player enters a specific "dungeon," the player is a certain level and the monsters are a certain level.  This is orginally a hard fight, but as the player plays more, he gains experience, and eventually the monsters become easy.  When the next dungeon comes around, the monsters are tougher, and the player is challenged anew.

That's something I'm going for: instead of player character power that increases at the same rate as adversarial power, the player power increases gradually at a certain rate, and the adversarial power increases in infrequent but large bursts.

[TroyLovesRPG]

Hello Willow,

Excellent response. I'll check out the rummy-fight post.

I don't fully understand the Dharma and Kharma. I'll read more.

I think pools with success tallies work very well. The basic premise is good, but adding a lot of rules concerning how to use the pool could get mind-boggling (for me). I think I read that 4-6 on a die is success. If you use the 6 as an extra success then you have a stacking situation that could make an imbalance. I suggest that you treat the 6 as an escalated success or activation success. Example: I roll 5 dice to attack, get 3 Successes and 2 Escalation. The defender rolls 5 dice, gets 4 Successes and 1 Escalation. The defender cancels one of my Escalation with his Escalation and wipes out my other successes. The extra Escalation does something. It can just be a point of damage that gets through normal Defense Successes OR activates a special ability. So, one Escalation of the Attack form I'm using activates Feint and the opponent's next attack is reduced by 1 dice. Some abilities may require multiple Escalations; therefore, making those very special and only available when you pump enough reserves into the roll.

Creating maneuvers is a nice idea. It reminds me of the spell casting in Ars Magica. If you use 6 as an Escalation then you could potentially have sub-abilities in your maneuvers that activate when the correct number of Escalation arises. That way, you get damage and maybe a cool effect, or very little damage and a major effect. That would give you some balance instead of just creating stacking critical damage (has that been done?)

Many times I rely on special objects (weapons, spells, circumstances) in a dungeon to defeat the monster residing there. This allows the characters to have two ways of succeeding: attack the monster until it dies (yawn) or discover a unique way of defeating it. Attacking is simple, roll the dice and add the damage. Discovery is better because it introduces something new for the characters. Part of the discovery is finding the object, knowing its purpose and using it against the right challenge at the right time. The corruption factor you talk about comes in. Holding on to the object, becoming greedy or straying from the challenge gives rise to corruption opportunities.

This whole system reminds me of the Zelda games. I liked those because they challenged me mentally. Of course the mechanics are seamless. I can see that being your greatest task: develop the system so it is very fast from declaration to resolution, still allowing you all the options, maneuvers and combinations you want. I find the best systems are the ones where you use the dice as they are. No checking the current dice then rolling additional dice.

Troy