Narrativist game - basic resolution ideas

[kris_h]

Hi,

My name is Chris. Im a long time lurker, but it’s my first post on the Forge. I’m not a native English speaker, so my language may not be perfect.

I was thinking about writing a game for some time now. I have written several drafts during past two years, but all have been flawed in my opinion. Each failed design taught me something and I think that this time I’m on the right tracks.

Let’s start with inspirations. I really like narrative attitude of HeroQuest and way it resolves the conflicts, but its dice systems just lack elegance in my opinion. I'm quite impressed by many other narrative games (Sorcerer, The Shadow of Yesterday and Wushu come to mind). I’d love to make a game that combines HeroQuest's narrative approach with transparent resolution system. After some tinkering, I came to a conclusion, that Sorcerer inspired dice pool system could do the job (i.e. target number is unimportant, but the values you roll). So, here’s my idea.

Character’s traits are rated (most of the time) between 2 and 5. I’d like to use freeform keywords as traits, in a manner similar to Heroquest and other narrative games.

Conflicts are resolved by rolling apriopriate amount of 6-sided dice. Side with lowest roll wins, adding together all dice lower than the opponent’s roll to decide the outcome of the action. Game is, of course, conflict oriented.

Example: Hero fights with a thug. He rolls his 4 dice and gets 1, 2, 4, 6. Thug rolls 3 dice and gets 2, 3, 3. Hero wins with a margin of 1.

There’s quite simple resolution table which can be easily remembered. Effects of victory depend on the winner's margin:

5 or more = Complete victory – enemy is dead or dying
4 = Overwhelming victory - enemy is incapacitated
3 = Major victory – enemy gets -3
2 = Decisive victory - enemy gets -2
1 = Minor victory - enemy gets -1
0 = Tie

All negative modifiers are added as wounds, etc. They are cumulative, so getting 4 minor defeats in a similar task means, that hero is incapacitated. It could mean physical incapacitation or other way of loosing ability to affect the scene. Wound system is also used in social situations. I love the idea of „social death” used in Heroquest, so I’ll go with it. Negative modifiers are used as advantage points for the opponent (they are described few paragraphs below), if the wound is relevant to the conflict.

Example: Hero has been trying to impress a group of townsfolk. He failed, and they don’t trust him too much (-1 modifier). Later in the game he gets to fight with a group of local thugs. Their mistrust has nothing to do with physical conflict, so hero doesn’t get any penalties in the fight.

But that’s not everything. There is an advantage point mechanic. Characters can get advantage bonus for a good narrative, tactical advantage or superior equipement. Advantage points are also awarded when fighting with wounded enemy (1 advantage for each relevant -1 modifier, etc.). Each advantage allows to lower one own die roll by one point. If two sides have advantages, they negate themselves on one-to-one basis. So, if a character has 2 advantages, and opposing npc has 1 advantage, then the character gets to use 1 advantage point in the conflict.

Example: Private detective is involved in a firefight with a thug. Detective wears a bulletproof vest, which grants him clear advantage (1 advantage). He rolls 1, 4, 5, 6. Thug rolls 1, 4, 5. Detective uses advantage point to lower his 4 to 3. Now he’s got two dice lower than his opponent. Detective thus wins with a margin of 4 (3 + 1). Thug is incapacitated.

Extended conflicts could work by setting amount of simple contests needed to win. Depending on the importance of the conflict, GM can set it to 2 or more victories. Sides accumulate victory points in each round. Side, which first reaches victory limit, wins by margin equal to the accumulated points divided by amount of victories needed.

Example: Hero tries to humiliate a rival noble in front of his court. GM sets 2 victories as a limit. In the first round hero wins and gains 2 points. In the second round he also wins, but gets only 1 point. He wins with 2 points (total margin pf 3 divided by 2 victories needed = 1,5 which is rounded up to the final score of 2). So it’s a decisive victory. Poor noble is clearly humiliated and will have problems with his authority (-2 to some social rolls).

Conflicts against obstacles can be resolved in two ways. Most should be resolved by opposed roll against difficulty pool chosen by GM.

Some tests may be rolled against static difficulty. I consider using static difficulty rolls for all kinds of buff rolls (i.e. using an ability to add bonus to one's next action). One could roll his trait against static value of 3 and receive amount of advantage points equal to the margin he rolled (with maximum bonus equal to the trait).

That’s all for now. Is this basic idea a good start? Is there something unclear or perhaps something that could be more intuitive? I'm striving for a transparent design, which can be easily used once you grasp basic ideas. That means no tables that need to be checked frequently or similar stuff.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I’d be happy to answer them. I've got more ideas to post, but at the moment I'd like to focus on the basics.

[Simon C]

A few things, in brief:

First, systems like this are vulnerable to "trait grubbing", where players hunt around for relevant traits and twist the fiction to make their traits relevant.  This can be unsatisfying.

Creating "Freeform" traits needs a lot of guidance during character creation to achieve the right tone.  What stops a person having "good at everything" at five dice?

Dice pool systems like Sorcerer's (and also Cold City, and to some extent The Mountain Witch) are vulnerable to a thing where the more dice you roll, the more likely you are to get a tied result.  This is especially true using d6s.  That means that the more powerful the opponents are, the more likely you are to get "minor victory" by your rules.  This is a very frustrating thing in The Mountain Witch, and makes Sorcerer work pretty poorly with d6s.   

You describe a bonus for "good narrative".  Do you mean "if the player describes something in a cool way", or "if the player describes something that works in the fiction, and makes sense"?  I like the second option, but I don't like the first.  There are a few reasons for this which I can go into if you like.

[kris_h]

A few things, in brief:

First, systems like this are vulnerable to "trait grubbing", where players hunt around for relevant traits and twist the fiction to make their traits relevant.  This can be unsatisfying.

Creating "Freeform" traits needs a lot of guidance during character creation to achieve the right tone.  What stops a person having "good at everything" at five dice?

Dice pool systems like Sorcerer's (and also Cold City, and to some extent The Mountain Witch) are vulnerable to a thing where the more dice you roll, the more likely you are to get a tied result.  This is especially true using d6s.  That means that the more powerful the opponents are, the more likely you are to get "minor victory" by your rules.  This is a very frustrating thing in The Mountain Witch, and makes Sorcerer work pretty poorly with d6s.   

You describe a bonus for "good narrative".  Do you mean "if the player describes something in a cool way", or "if the player describes something that works in the fiction, and makes sense"?  I like the second option, but I don't like the first.  There are a few reasons for this which I can go into if you like.

Thanks for reply.

I was testing few things and thinking about other methods of resolution. I'm starting to lean more towards resolution system similar to Silhouette. Roll your pool, highest roll determines your basic score. Each additional roll of highest value adds one to it. Side with higher roll wins with margin equal to difference of both scores.

Maybe I should explain why I'd like to use d6s and why I don't want use static TN's like in WW games for example. I dislike static TN's, because with larger amount of dice the gap between high and low pool is just too big. System described in the paragraph above seems to handle large pools better. It's vulnerable to the problem you described with Mountain Witch and Cold City (to be honest, I don't know any of this games). I think this problem could be partially solved if players are able to earn additional dice or influence the rolls with some kind of "Hero points". Any other ideas?

Regarding freeform traits. To be honest, I didn't think about this kind of problems. Although I was fearing that lack of static attributes could make resolution system unclear. At the moment, I think about using set of predefined attributes (six of them, like Brawn, Reason and so on). They are used as base for all actions. Then, each character would have traits divided into three categories - Backgrounds (profession and past experiences), Relationships (contacts, membership) and Personality (values, beliefs, minor goals and personality traits). In each action character can get bonus dice from his Background or Relationship. In some cases, he could also get bonuses for his Personality.

Regarding last paragraph of your post. I think I know what you mean,  but I'd be happy to hear your arguments. Actually, I was thinking about dividing both bonuses. So, cool action gets a bonus, action true to the genre gets a bonus, and action combining both gets double bonus. Let me speak more about dice pool bonuses.

Cool and engaging narrative gets a die. Most of the time players should get this bonus often.

Each story has a theme or premise (don't know how to name it yet). It is chosen at the beginning and noted on the character sheets. It could be as simple as "brutal and gritty" or more elaborate, let's say: "vengeance demands sacrifice". Any action supporting the theme/premise gets a bonus die.

Each story has a genre - horror, action, pulp, drama, etc. Each action that supports the genre gets a bonus die. In action genre you could get bonus for running at the foes with guns blazing, in horror you could get it for running away from chainsaw wielding slasher, etc.

Especially dramatic action could get one diee more. But this kind of situation should be rare, perhaps one per session or even less.

Actions that are clever and tactical apply for additional dice too. Sitational advantages also apply here.

I think this kind of reward system encourages players to do all sorts of fun stuff that supports the themes of chosen story. With mentioned d6 mechanics stacking a lot of dice shouldn't give any unhealthy advantages, at least not as big, as in static TN resolution systems.

[Klaus Graziade]

Hi Chris,

I've tested a system very similar to your prototype, and I actually like your idea better than the one I had come up with.  Though my tests were erratic (hard time scheduling) and spread over the course of several months, I found a couple things that might be helpful.  First, I definitely want to say that your about margins of success is pretty cool, and I'd like to see that developed.  My one concern, and I found this to be VERY noticeable during play-testing, was what to do during ties in the direct resolution system. 

Dice pool systems like Sorcerer's (and also Cold City, and to some extent The Mountain Witch) are vulnerable to a thing where the more dice you roll, the more likely you are to get a tied result.  This is especially true using d6s.  That means that the more powerful the opponents are, the more likely you are to get "minor victory" by your rules.  This is a very frustrating thing in The Mountain Witch, and makes Sorcerer work pretty poorly with d6s.   

What Simon said is very true, and I'm quite wary of ties.  Here's how we solved it:

Very roughly, my friends and I were using d10s and looking for the high number.  When it came down to the nitty-gritty of it all, 10 came up a lot, especially with highly skilled PCs.  We had to innovate an on the fly system of dice cancellation on a 1:1 basis.  It was far from perfect, however, and only temporary fix to the issue we faced.

All that musing aside, I am very curious to see how you deal with ties, especially in a d6 based system.  When both PC and NPC roll 1's, for example, it seems like there isn't really a fixed way to deal with the fact that they both rolled the best possible roll.

I hope my sharing of experiences helps, and I am definitely curious to see how you iron out this little wrinkle, because I think that in the end, you could have a very cool system.

[kris_h]

Hi Chris,

I've tested a system very similar to your prototype, and I actually like your idea better than the one I had come up with.  Though my tests were erratic (hard time scheduling) and spread over the course of several months, I found a couple things that might be helpful.  First, I definitely want to say that your about margins of success is pretty cool, and I'd like to see that developed.  My one concern, and I found this to be VERY noticeable during play-testing, was what to do during ties in the direct resolution system. 

Quote
Dice pool systems like Sorcerer's (and also Cold City, and to some extent The Mountain Witch) are vulnerable to a thing where the more dice you roll, the more likely you are to get a tied result.  This is especially true using d6s.  That means that the more powerful the opponents are, the more likely you are to get "minor victory" by your rules.  This is a very frustrating thing in The Mountain Witch, and makes Sorcerer work pretty poorly with d6s.   

What Simon said is very true, and I'm quite wary of ties.  Here's how we solved it:

Very roughly, my friends and I were using d10s and looking for the high number.  When it came down to the nitty-gritty of it all, 10 came up a lot, especially with highly skilled PCs.  We had to innovate an on the fly system of dice cancellation on a 1:1 basis.  It was far from perfect, however, and only temporary fix to the issue we faced.

All that musing aside, I am very curious to see how you deal with ties, especially in a d6 based system.  When both PC and NPC roll 1's, for example, it seems like there isn't really a fixed way to deal with the fact that they both rolled the best possible roll.

I hope my sharing of experiences helps, and I am definitely curious to see how you iron out this little wrinkle, because I think that in the end, you could have a very cool system.

Hi,

Thanks, every thought is very helpful, especially at this early stage. As I've said in my last post, I'm think about using a bit different system. Some ideas in my first post have changed. For example, advantages (changing your dice rolls) will be out, only bonus dice will be used.

I'm aware that d6s are less random than larger dice, but my new resolution mechanic* seems to work better with it. Rolls of, let's say, 10 dice verus 4 dice seem to scale better than in Storyteller for example. Such high dice pool wins often, but margins of victory aren't extremely high, which is good in my opinion.

Still, ties would probably show up more often than in other systems (at least probability tables say so). I was thinking about introducing a little system to make them less often. One different die is added to the pool, let's call it "sudden death die". If two rolls are tied, compare the "sudden death dice" of both sides as if they were the final scores of both contestants. If they are tied, then, well, we have a tie. I think it would help when contestants have similar sized dice pools and, possibly, could allow to score lucky hits on better opponents.

* Well, I know it's not new entirely. Silhouette uses it for example.