Hitting a wall with my Greek adventure design

[Abkajud]

[cross-posted at story-games.com]

Hey, gang,
I'm working on a mechanic for my Greek adventure game, The Hellenes. I've been tinkering with it quite a bit, trying to achieve Story Now, and so far I've not met with success.

Here's my latest idea: at any time, a player may opt to make an "offering" of some advantage or ally in play – the asset is lost in some way, and in exchange the player gets to automatically succeed on a roll, no questions asked Example: I was supposed to keep an eye on this woman for my commanding officer, but then I get called away by the villagers for some damn thing. I want to succeed on my Repair check or whatever to help them, so I tell the GM "Hey, I'm gonna let that woman run away. She's my Offering for my Repair check." Bang, instant success.

There are two other things you can do with an offering:
1- you can turn a regular d6 (succeeds on 5 or 6) into an orange Hubris d6 (succeeds on 4-6) but if you end up with a skill whose pool is more than half orange, you can only do evil or selfish things with it.
2 – you can turn a regular d6 into a green Aegis d6 (succeeds on 3-6), but if you have a majority of green dice in a skill pool, you can only do the gods' work with it.

If you try to go outside this limitation, all colored dice are removed. So, if I put a lot of Hubris into my Spear-Fighting skill, and then try to use it to actually help somebody, instead of wreaking vengeance or making myself look good, all my special orange dice get stripped out of it – it's a little like alignment, I guess, in that it's going against my nature, a nature I've been consciously crafting through play.

My problem is: that bit about the gods' work? What is that, exactly? I feel like I'm making a lot more work for myself by having to devise the gods' work, and then tie it into the story. It occurred to me to consider the gods' reaction to the players' kickers, but I got stuck on thinking of the Greek gods and what they might actually want from mortals. I came up with consorts, nemeses (to fulfill some divine vengeance), champions, and priests. With that, though, it feels more and more like I should just go play Hero Quest (the RPG, that is), and stop pulling my hair out over my choice to make the game set in mythological Greece.

Thoughts?

Damn Olympians.

[chronoplasm]

Well I guess the gods work would depend on the particular god.
Perhaps when you make an offering, you choose a specific god to offer to?
Then, you can only perform a task within the chosen gods domain.
For Aphrodite, this would be sex and seduction. For Hephaestus, this would be metal-working. For Poseidon this would be sailing.

[JoyWriter]

To make the the orange dice fit hubris, in the greek sense then you'll need some god-envy mechanic: As far as I'm aware ancient greeks treated hubris not as a sign of evil but as a big "smite me" flag for the gods. How about you roll your dice, in two piles, "dedicated dice" (aegis dice) on one side and skill dice on the other, and successes from the skill side build up god-envy, and successes on the other side take it away. The hubris dice are more dangerous simply because they are better. Or you could just call it a "hubris test". As a random extra mechanic, sixes on the hubris dice mean that people around you are envious even if the Gods like you. So taking the pool to zero via aegis dice with a few sixes in the pool means that some local person develops a grudge, even if no massive storms are on the horizon.

You could buy off the score by taking misfortune, and if it gets too high you get killed, or you could just have it that for every success on the dice something bad happens.

[Abkajud]

For now, I'm going with a sweet suggestion on play mechanic stuff - yes, absolutely rolling the two types of dice for a pool separately, and if the only successes you get are on the Aegis (or Hubris) dice, then something happens.

Aegis successes only = a Visitation; a god shows up and claims credit for your success.

Hubris successes only = a Smiting. Don't worry - it's been pointed out to me that I wasn't really expressing the concept properly.

Taking an auto-failure lets you convert a special die back to a regular one.

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey Abkajud,

Have you seen AGON?  It's a game aligned very closely with your premise, but explicitly competitive.  It is 100% worth checking out, because it addresses the same issues you are wrestling with from a different perspective.  Also it is a great game.

[Jonathan Walton]

How much contact do the characters have with the gods?  Because, like, if the gods talk to the characters and say: "Verily, Damocles, I lay my hand on your spear and bless it so that you may slay Cretus, son of Poseidon, who has earned my displeasure."  Then you know EXACTLY what the gods' will is.  If the players have to guess what the gods' will is, then that basically leaves it up to GM fiat whether they've guessed right or not.  "Oh, sorry, that's not on Zeus' list of Things You Can Do With Your Spear... I guess you get hosed."

Also, and this is unrelated to your original question, I like the different types of dice, but I'm wondering if it would be easier to track if they changed size and not color AND success numbers.  For example, say you succeed on a 5+ or something.  If you roll D6s, you succeed on a 5-6 (1/3 of the time).  But if you roll D8s, you succeed 5-8 (1/2 the time). Seems like you could do similar things to what you're doing with the colored dice, but have a fixed target number that would simplify things.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi,

I'm going to echo what Jonathan just said in his last post (both paragraphs).  Then, onwards!

I'm a little weirded out by your concern that devising the gods' work is...well, hard work.  Shit, the gods are just NPCs, and their agendas need prepping just like all your other NPCs' agendas need prepping.  If you've got a meaty situation, then you do the GM prep work: how do your various NPCs (including Gods) react to that situation?  What would they want?

And Jonathan's right about not keeping the Gods' agendas hidden.  My gods would sound more like a sleazy cyberpunk fixer, but his characterization is good too.

Also: the gods don't have to talk to the characters, like ever.  So long as the players know the gods' agendas, you're golden.

D

[Abkajud]

Jason - I plan on doing just that! ^_^ it's a really cool-looking game, especially with its concept of "relief scenes", the idea that there are specific kinds of scenes in play. Rad!

Jonathan - good call on different dice sizes. Remembering color AND size AND number range is too much, but giving all dice the same range (5+, prolly) is good, and different colors might further solidify the distinction between dice sizes. As for Visitations: the gods can literally appear to the hero; why not, eh?

Darcy - I guess you're right. Being abstract kind of handicaps me; I know that in an actual play session, I'll be fine.