a couple mechanics ideas

[Matt Wilson]

I've got this game setting idea that I dig, and I was considering applying FUDGE rules to it, but man, what's the fun in that? I think I need to do the whole package.

So I started brainstorming some systems ideas, and I had a couple. I was messing with. See if these float your boat. Heck, you might have thought of 'em first. If you did, tell me to piss off and quit using your ideas. It's so rude of me.

1.  Dn - Dn.  That is, take the absolute value of the difference between the dice. Makes a nice curve. The only trouble I have with this is that it'd be tricky to apply levels of success than with a dice-pool mechanic. And the whole roll + stat + attribute thing isn't as fun as rolling gobs of dice.

2. Skills = number of dice in the dice pool.  Attribute = TN to roll (or less) to get a success. OR you could switch it so that attribute = DN, or hey, maybe the player gets to choose which is which.

Anyone tried using either of those? I kind of like the latter one better. The first one I think would be okay if the numbers were small, so that you could measure something like Silhouettes MoS.

-Matt

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I'm a dice-system junkie, so I love posts like this.

One thing you might consider is not Setting or System, but rather Premise. This term has some strange levels of meaning here at the Forge, so if you're interested, check out my big essay GNS and other matters of role-playing design. It works much better for me, anyway, when a game proposal gets discussed in these terms.

Looking at your notions though ...

1) This method produces a rather odd distribution, if I understand it correctly. Say we used d6's, so you have 36 possible outcomes on the dice. Of those, six instances are 0, ten instances are 1, eight instances are 2, six instances are 3, four instances are 4, and two instances are 5. It's a straight line with a sharp "corner" at one end.

You might also consider that there are lots more options out there besides "stat + skill" and "dice pool." Also that each of these contains a fair amount of diversity as well.

2) The game The Riddle of Steel uses the method in which the attribute provides the number of dice to roll and the skill provides the target number.

Finally, you mention the "degree of success" a couple of times (e.g. your reference to MoS in the Silhouette system). You might be surprised that quite a few systems out there don't concern themselves much with this effect, or achieve it in very simple ways that don't involve arithmetic.

Best,
Ron

[Matt Wilson]

I'm a dice-system junkie, so I love posts like this.

Thanks for the response.

I like systems too. I'm still searching for the mythical system that makes me younger and more attractive and decreases my risk of heart disease.

One thing you might consider is not Setting or System, but rather Premise. This term has some strange levels of meaning here at the Forge, so if you're interested, check out my big essay GNS and other matters of role-playing design. It works much better for me, anyway, when a game proposal gets discussed in these terms.

I haven't read your essay, but I'm familiar with the GNS thing. I'm probably a 75/15/10 N/G/S split. I likes me a good story, but man, I think the cards and chips in Deadlands are fun as hell.

1) This method produces a rather odd distribution, if I understand it correctly. Say we used d6's, so you have 36 possible outcomes on the dice. Of those, six instances are 0, ten instances are 1, eight instances are 2, six instances are 3, four instances are 4, and two instances are 5. It's a straight line with a sharp "corner" at one end.

I like it because it weights a likelihood of getting a result. If the system uses a target number, you can at least eyeball the likelihood of reaching that number.

And I think it'd be cool to use d12-d12, and say "Dude, our system goes to 11." Maybe I'll create a rock band game just for that.

You might also consider that there are lots more options out there besides "stat + skill" and "dice pool." Also that each of these contains a fair amount of diversity as well.

Yeah, I hope no one felt slighted by that. There's a bunch of really clever ideas out there.

Finally, you mention the "degree of success" a couple of times (e.g. your reference to MoS in the Silhouette system). You might be surprised that quite a few systems out there don't concern themselves much with this effect, or achieve it in very simple ways that don't involve arithmetic.

I wouldn't doubt that. It's just an easy concept for me to focus on. I'm not necessarily trying for something groundbreaking, just suitable for the game and fun to play.

[Matt Wilson]

One thing you might consider is not Setting or System, but rather Premise. This term has some strange levels of meaning here at the Forge, so if you're interested, check out my big essay GNS and other matters of role-playing design. It works much better for me, anyway, when a game proposal gets discussed in these terms.

Okay, I read that article (look at me hard at work). Good stuff.  And I thought of GNS differently than as you describe them. Ditch the G. I'm probably a N/S split. But now I feel like I have some pondering to do...

[M. J. Young]

Although it's interesting to look at possible mechanics for use in a game, and there are certainly things you can say about them, discussing them in a vacuum like this isn't particularly useful to game design.

That is, you've got to start from what it is you want your mechanic to accomplish, and then look for a way to accomplish this.

As an example, a friend of mine came to me with a game that was grossly unbalanced. By his reckoning, because of the way the setting worked, player characters would start with maybe ten to fifteen "hit points", but could work their way up to the point that they could survive attacks that would destroy planets, with seven-digit values. He could see no way to preserve the aspect of the game in which these advanced characters could throw around sci-fi weapons and still give new players any chance to survive in the setting. My response was to revamp his entire damage value system into three aspects, with limits on each. As characters advanced, they would be able to improve each aspect to achieve the effect of millions of points without actually having those millions of points. A character would have:
--Raw Points, that which actually measured the damage, but never more than one hundred.
--Damage dividers, the ability to withstand the damage from an attack by dividing it by a number not greater than ten before subtracting; this would be rounded up, so an attack that did one point of damage to a character with a 0 damage divider would still do that same one point to a 10 damage divider character.
--Probable Immunity; this was divided into types of damage, such as kinetic, photonic, radiation (I don't recall the entire list), and a character would build up this probable immunity in each area independently, up to 95%. If the attack was of a type to which the character had probable immunity, a die roll determined whether he avoided damage from that attack entirely, or took full damage.
Thus by combining the three aspects, one could create a character that could survive combats in which planets were destroyed, but could never escape the possibility that the next hit might be fatal.

Now, that worked very well for his game, because he had an objective of creating a game in which characters could become unbelievably powerful, god-like in the natural universe, but still at risk. The mechanic was designed to meet the objectives of the game. It would make no sense in most games.

So the question is, what do you want the mechanics of the game to accomplish? Until you know that, you really can't make intelligent choices about how to design them.

--M. J. Young

[Matt Wilson]

Although it's interesting to look at possible mechanics for use in a game, and there are certainly things you can say about them, discussing them in a vacuum like this isn't particularly useful to game design.

That is, you've got to start from what it is you want your mechanic to accomplish, and then look for a way to accomplish this.

I suppose I left off a few bits that would make the intentions more obvious. I was sorta testing the water to see if anyone had used the mechanic and how different that instance was from what I was thinking.

The game, which I guess I can discuss in general on the game design forum, is a moderately paced space opera. Maybe something at the speed and feel of Babylon 5. I want a mostly narrative feel, but a little simulationist as far as character introspection goes (consider that whole "what is it to be human" theme in Star Trek).

The basic mechanic needs to A) provide a narrative-friendly search and handling time, B) provide a range of success values, and C) scale to accomodate non-human things. There's probably some other criteria, but I just started into my coffee.

Both of my basic mechanics ideas do that so far. I really like the probability curve of the |d-d| mechanic, as it's easy to eyeball what a character can and can't accomplish. If I have a "skill" of 3, and the mechanic is |d6-d6|, and the number I need to succeed (by adding die roll and "skill") is 4, I know I have an 83% chance of pulling it off, with the odds getting slimmer for rolling greater than that number. What I like about that is that characters can use that knowledge in play: "Sure Captain, I can give you extra power, but I don't know for how long."

There's also room to add goofy player controlled "fate" options, like rolling an extra die in the mix and choosing the highest and lowest from the mix.

Hope that makes my initial rambling post a little clearer. That's what I get for posting from work, eh?

[Mike Holmes]

I want a mostly narrative feel, but a little simulationist as far as character introspection goes (consider that whole "what is it to be human" theme in Star Trek).

What's the Sim part in that? "What is it to be human?" is about as Narrativist a premise as I can imagine.

Mike

[Matt Wilson]

I want a mostly narrative feel, but a little simulationist as far as character introspection goes (consider that whole "what is it to be human" theme in Star Trek).

What's the Sim part in that? "What is it to be human?" is about as Narrativist a premise as I can imagine.

Mike

Perhaps I'm still not understanding the divisions, but I mean simulationism in terms of what's being explored and how the game supports it. One of the examples in Ron's article:

A possible development of the "vampire" premise in terms of Character Exploration might be, What does it feel like to be a vampire?

I was thinking it'd be cool to support that somehow. Not sure exactly how I'd do it yet.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Mike, I think you're being a little strict with the Narrativism thing - for purposes of the present topic, it wasn't hard for me to fill in the necessary gaps to make "What does it mean to be human" into a Simulationist example. Maybe "feel like" rather than "mean" would be the easiest translation (granted, it's shallow and vague, but c'mon, we're talking about a side point here).

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

My point is that I think that he could stay away from the Sim side, if he wanted by just looking at the "Humanity" question from the Narrativist angle. And his Star Trak reference is very Narrativist IMO, as well as it being about introspection (as opposed to, say, Kewl Powerz). In play the issue comes down to player decisions on such issues.

If it's just a matter of having CharGen where you have a lot of options that can make you extra-human, then that's a fine Sim point, as well.

Or he can do both, actually.

Mike