[Grey Ranks] Incentivizing Play

[Jason Morningstar]

...which is a fancy way of saying that I'm thinking about bonuses and penalties.

The core mechanic is a die roll that must exceed the current scene number (1 through 9) for a success. Your die size scales up from an initial d4 to d10 or, rarely, d12. Due to the gradual increase in die sizes, the odds are stacked against success on straight rolls pretty badly. If you just phone it in you will probably fail, as well as slip your character toward suicidal depression. Good times.

But there are a bunch of things players can do to increase their odds - injecting situation, reincorporating, including other characters in their narration, sacrificing important and non-renewable resources (their own and those of other players), and so forth. Some of these just add color and excitement and some burn stuff you care about forever. Right now I'm trying to figure out the best way to apply these benefits.

There are die increments (in Scene three you roll a 3, bump it to a 4), which are powerful in early scenes and weaker in later scenes, but a sure thing. These are also, in terms of play dynamics and at-table fun, sort of boring.

There are re-rolls, which are chancy but powerful in later scenes (In Scene eight you roll a 2 on your d10, then re-roll to get a 7, which you can work with)

There are substitutions, which change your d4 into a d6 or whatever before a roll, which are always useful in a general way. Right now the "big sacrifice" (of which there is one per player to burn) gives you a d12 to swap with your die, or a sure-thing +/-3 increment.

I'm sure there are other fun dice tricks, and I'm open to suggestions. What I want to figure out is how to offer minor and major benefits, based on the degree of initiative and/or pain a player invokes. Playtesting will tell, but if there are obvious statistical tell-tales, I'd love to get schooled on them. The escalating difficulty makes it a little beyond my mathematical ken.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

But there are a bunch of things players can do to increase their odds - injecting situation, reincorporating, including other characters in their narration, sacrificing important and non-renewable resources (their own and those of other players), and so forth. Some of these just add color and excitement and some burn stuff you care about forever. Right now I'm trying to figure out the best way to apply these benefits.

-I got a question about this real quick.  Is there also a dis-incentive for sacrificing someone else's resources?  I mean, looking at this from a selfish me-centered point of view, I'd much rather sacrifice my buddy's girlfriend than my own to get a bonus.  What stops me from doind that?  Or at least, makes me think twice about doing so?

-The other parts parts of your game look pretty rad.  I've thought about incremental die growth as a character advancement system myself recently.  I'll be very interested to read some playtesting reports once you get some.  I have one question though, do players roll only one die or a pool of dice?  Or both depending on the situation?

Peace,

-Troy

[Jason Morningstar]

Hi Troy,

The dis-incentive is that another player always chooses one of the two dice you get to roll in each scene.  So if you shaft somebody, they are probably going to shaft you back. 

Each player contributes two dice to a pool at the beginning of each scene.  One die is based on their position on the grid, and the other is related to their Heart, and represents a feature of their charcter they want to explore during the scene.  So in a four-player game, there are eight dice in the pool, of varying sizes.  Then each player chooses a die for themselves, and then everybody goes around again and assigns a die to somebody else. 

So when I see you grab the only available d10 in the pool, and remember that you burned up the only thing my character holds dear last scene for a bonus, I'm going to be inclined to give you the smallest die left in the pool...

[Hans]

Jason, what strikes me from what you describe (and it may be a misunderstanding) is the significant "whiff" that seems likely in later scenes for doing something REALLY major.

Lets say I'm in the difficulty 8 scene (I'm guessing 2nd from the last).  I burn something really important to me, such as let my sister be captured by the Gestapo in order to escape, or similar.  Even at a d12, I still only win the conflict one out of three times.  Is this a design feature?  Admittedly, how big an issue this is depends a lot on how the conflicts the dice are rolled for get set up.  If there is a very solid way to ensure that win or lose something very interesting happens, then the "whiff" is not really a "whiff".  But my first knee-jerk is that I would want a bit more certainty when I burn something really important to me, regardless of what scene I am in. 

I guess what I am getting at is that, in the later scenes, it seems like it would be good to have the conflicts be more Karma than Fortune decided.  That is, my character is in a bad situation, and I can look at my character sheet and see EXACTLY what I would have to do make it through; kill my best friend, betray my mother, etc.  Its not so much a gamble as a stark, horrible choice.

On the other hand, I could see you wanting to build in that feeling of desperation in the later scenes, where even the most important things to you are still only gambles against the odds.  I'm not sure if I would find that enjoyable, but then again, exactly what enjoyable means in the context of this game's premise is going to be very much in the eye of the beholder.  The premise is so daring that the kinds of rewards the game will deliver to the players are liable to be very different from almost any other RPG.

Am I misunderstanding something?

[Jason Morningstar]

No Hans, you're spot on.  Right now the game scales in a way that makes success in the third act (scenes 7, 8 and 9) difficult, and even nearly impossible on straight die rolls.  I really want that "Oh my God, we're in so much trouble" feeling evoked. 

Conversely, the first few scenes are laughably easy.  Of course the first scenes take place before the Uprising, and the last take place 40 days into a planned 5 day insurgency that saw genocide, wholesale destruction of entire neighborhoods, and every other imaginable war crime.  System-wise, it's looking like the average player will have the opportunity to adjust his die roll upward by a point or two in every roll, and get a chance to re-roll a die fairly often as well. 

A lot of folks have commented on how bleak it is, and I'm not sure what to do with that - in my mind it isn't a game about winning, because you can't win.  Nobody in the Polish resistance "won".  It's about losing on your own terms.  At the same time rolling dice has to matter, so I definitely don't want a situation where you don't bother making sacrifices because it simply won't help.

[Jason Morningstar]

Oh, and to address your point about fortune vs. karma, it's well taken.  I also like the idea of having the terrible choice laid out for you.  It will be unsatisfying if you make a huge sacrifice and the dice betray you, so maybe making a huge sacrifice means the dice can't betray you.  I'll think on it, thanks!

[Hans]

At the same time rolling dice has to matter, so I definitely don't want a situation where you don't bother making sacrifices because it simply won't help.

It will be unsatisfying if you make a huge sacrifice and the dice betray you, so maybe making a huge sacrifice means the dice can't betray you.

Putting these two comments together, there is an interesting dynamic in personal risk assessment involved here. 

Here is a scenario.  Story wise, my sister and I are trapped by the Gestapo.  I have some important info in my head, if I can get it to the Resistance, we can eliminate some traitors in the organization and save a lot of our comrades.  If I sacrifice my sister to the Gestapo, I will get some advantage in getting away from them.  Mechanically, I am in scene 8 (diff 8) as before, and the sacrifice of my sister (one assumes she is represented by some burn off trait on my character sheet will give me +X on the roll of a d10. 

Of course, this kind of gamble happens in ALL RPG's, but it is a rare RPG that puts the choices in such incredibly stark light.  We're not talking about killing some orcs and getting treasure, or getting the McGuffin to Mr. Johnson or not, we're talking the freaking Gestapo and your sister!

So the question is...how big does X have to be before I cross the threshold from don't sacrifice my sister to sacrifice my sister.  Mathematically, its pretty straightforward; if X>3 then on average I will succeed in the conflict and get away with the info.  But in reality its incredibly complicated; how invested am I in the fiction associated with my sister to that point in the game, how cool do I think the relative chances of sacrifice and success with guild versus no sacrifice, loss, and righteous death are, what is my own personal tolerance for uncertainty in outcome, etc.  Depending on the situation, some people might be willing to go for the gamble even for a measly +1, while other people (such as myself) might be unwilling to make the sacrifice for anything less than near certainty (+6).

This is like the kind of research they do to determine Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY's) for economic research in health care.  How many years of your life would you give up not to be blind?  Not to lose both legs?  Not to have cancer?

I'm not sure where I am going with this...I just find it fascinating.  I guess it might be a long way around to saying that for some people (such as myself) with a low tolerance for uncertainty, certain kinds of resolution mechanics will be more meaningful, while others with a high tolerance for uncertainty will be very different.

[Jason Morningstar]

At this point I'm not at all sure what flavor of bonus/penalty will be tied to what action, and one thought that keeps popping up is to balance the various techniques and let the player choose.  A straight +2 or increase your die size?  A modest sure thing or a more chancy wider spread?  The principal dilemma is that one option makes more sense early in the game, and the other, later.  So there is always an optimal choice, except perhaps in act two.  But the idea of "assembling a bonus" out of various die tricks is appealing, from a table/handling perspective.