Several Mechanics Ideas

[d3nial]

I've just read Gaiman's 'American Gods' and Elton's 'Dead Famous' this weekend - quite different books but surprisingly I found a common thread in the portrayal of modern culture. I inferred that Gaiman cast the new gods as somehow less than the old gods, whereas Elton's explicitly cynical and satyrical account of a reality TV show and comparison to Shakespeare seems to say this openly.

Anyhow, after reading these 2 I had a sudden burst of inspiration for an RPG resolution mechanic:

My first thought was for a magic system where the results can be open-endedly spectacular. This would be achieved by rolling a d6 with the following table:

1 - failure (-1 effect)
2 - neutral (0 effect)
3 - marginal success (+1 effect)
4 - success (+2 effect)
5 - complete success (+3 effect)
6 - overload, critical failure

So rolling a 1d6 offers a 50% chance of some success, however the real "fun" starts when each subsequent d6 is rolled.

On a roll of 1 - 5 a subsequent d6 can be rolled and the effect scored added. So rolling a 3 then a 4 gives an effect score of +3. A 1 then 4 then 5 gives an effect score of +4.

The ability to perform miraculous acts comes from rolling as many consecutive dice as possible without rolling a 6.

Initially I thought that players would be allowed to roll as many dice as they liked (but always consecutively, never more than 1 d6 at once). However the problem with this is that while it may create high drama for the players to keep gambling and roll again and again, it means there is no difference between PCs to represent differing magic abilities.

One solution is to give PCs a rating of 0, 1 or 2. A PC with zero rating may still attempt the action but with no die roll modifiers. A PC with a rating of 1 may +/- 1 to any roll, a rating of 2 allows a +/-2 modifier. Because a rating makes a big difference being rated 1 or 2 makes you a powerful magic user.

Alternatively, PCs may have a rating from 1 upwards which indicates the number of d6s they may roll. This rating would be open-ended I guess, PCs could roll as many d6s as they wanted in attempting a given action.

Hmmm, I have more but I have to go. Will post more later.

Daniel

[Wormwood]

d3nial,

One modification might make things easier. Instead of making the degree of success cumulative, use the highest value, with each 5 after the first adding one more. This is open ended, but rightly feels like a gamble, since after a while you have an equal chance to botch as to improve. Also it's less cumbersome calculation wise.  Differences might be more on the ability to ignore some number of critical failures, or postpone them (which seems more in line with your inspirations.)

Remember: When gambling with reality. the house always wins.

   -Mendel S.

[d3nial]

Good idea Mendel! I like it. Do you think that PCs should have an unlimited number of dice to roll with modifiers based on ability, or should ability determine the number of dice a PC should roll?

Anyway, the other idea is to set a target like in 'blackjack' which should be known by the PCs, and then they roll as many or as few dice as they like to achieve as close to but not over the target. Going bust is obviously a failure while the closeness to the target number indicates degree of success, ranging from 0 to -5 variance (ie 0 = complete success, -1 = good success, -2 = moderate success, -3 = partial success, -4 = marginal success, -5 = unsuccessful).

Finally, I thought why not just use 'blackjack' straight up as the resolution mechanic. So an unskilled or low-level PC plays straight blackjack, hitting to receive one card each time. A skilled character gets 2 cards each hit and can choose which one to play and a masterful PC may have 3 cards to choose from.

Putting these into context is probably crucial, I would guess that the blackjack mechanic would seem incongruous in some settings, while the dice options are reasonable generic (at least for games where open-ended successes and spectacular overload failures are appropriate).

Thoughts?

Daniel

[Wormwood]

d3nial,

Well, I suppose the major difference between the original dice mechanic and the blackjack ones is that a player can 'go bust' on the first roll / draw (well an unexperienced one).  Also the blackjack style mechanic isn't open ended, something which has it's own advantages and disadvantages. In blackjack you can't do better than get a blackjack, likewise with the dice systems, meeting the total.

One thing I would take a look at is how easy it would be to get good blackjack hands if you can choose from 2 or 3 each hit. It's a difficult quesition, and there is a strong element of strategy. Which again is a good and a bad thing. Strategy slows down the game, and focuses on player choices. It's always nice to connect the player choices to a character response though.

As to a die cap on the system in my previous post, I don't see any need for one. It seems best to just have a 'soak' for some number of 6's as the skill rating.

Well, hope that helps,

   -Mendel S.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

This thread, Use of blackjack as mechanic might provide some interesting reading.

Best,
Ron

[d3nial]

More good input from Mendel - thanks.

So PCs have an ability rating, say Magical Ability, and it ranges from 0 (no magic ability) upwards. In terms of scale, 3 would be a competent magician, 6 would be a legendary sorceror and any higher is approaching deity level power.

Magic (primarily elemental) is described in terms of its effects, from 1 through to 100, for example elemental fire would go like this:

01 - 10 You generate a small glow and/or warmth from your hand
11 - 20 You generate a candle-like flame
21 - 30 You generate a small (apple sized) fireball
31 - 40 You create a large fireball
41 - 50 You conjur a pillar of fire
51 - 60 Think "sheets of fire raining from the sky"
61 - 80 A vast inferno is conjured - city-sized destruction
81 - 100 Fire, heat and destruction on a thermo-nuclear scale

Duration would be determined by the roll. A roll of 01 - 10 allows a glow lasting say 1 round (5 secs). A roll of 11 - 20 allows a candle like flame for 5 secs, or a glow for 1 minute (reduced effect, extra duration):

01 - 10 Up to 1 round (5secs)
11 - 20 Up to 1 Minute (60 secs)
21 - 30 Up to 12 Minutes
31 - 40 Up to 144 Minutes (just over 2 hours)
41 - 50 Up to 1728 minutes (just over a day)
51 - 60 Up to 2 weeks (about 20,000 minutes)
61 - 80 Up to 5 months
81 - 100 Up to 5 years

By default, all effects last only 1 round, but the scale of the effect can be "traded" down for additional duration. Therefore at the extreme maximum for thermonuclear effects to be created for more than 5 months the character would need to roll about 200 (on as many d6s as they dared - requiring a lot of "6-soaking" I would imagine).

Is this making sense?

One point to note is that any character with the ability to "use magic" could attempt any ritual/spell, there are no "levels" merely the ability to reduce catastrophic failure by "soaking" 6s.

Thanks for the feedback so far from all parties.

Daniel

EDIT: having just crunched some numbers I think the 01 - 100 scale is too high. Statistically it would be be likely (better than 50%) that a caster with one "soak" could roll up an effect of about 6. I think, if my numbers are correct, that a caster with up to 3 soaks could likely (>50%) roll an effect of 12, but it would be impossible (ie <1% chance) to roll an effect of 17 or more. Up to 6 soaks lets you likely roll 21, but probably never exceed 27. My stats could be out on these though, so if anyone wants to pitch in I'd sure appreciate it. Maybe the scale should be 01 - 30

[d3nial]

BUMP

Anyone got any feedback on the dice statistics I'm proposing and the duration/effect scales?

Thanks.

Daniel

[Gwen]

no.

[Christoffer Lernö]

This reminds me (not surprisingly perhaps) one of those really simple die games. Basically you want to get to 100 points first. You take turns and you get to roll as many times you want or until you roll a 1 (in the version I played). When you think "this is enough" you save that and add it to your total. Time for next player.

Essentially what you're saying. Except you have negative effects on your dice as well... and there's no "first to reach 100".

Something I thought of straight away:
If you have -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, loss on your die, then that's essentially rolling d6-2.

That means you could simply say: You roll a d6 and add that to the starting number of effects (which you already adjusted for the -2). Then the second rule is that you have to pay 2 effects to roll a new d6 amount of effects. 6 works as before.

It's the same as before but no "translation of numbers" would be needed.

Instead of having multiple dice, what about letting the magic rating be how many 6s you can ignore?

That would allow people with 1 in rating be able to safely roll much longer than someone with 0.

If I do a sample roll of dice: 2, 2, 2, 1, 4, 6, 2, 1, 4, 2, 3, 5, 4, 1, 2, 5, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 6 (is that die loaded with 2's or what?)

The skill 0 guy would gamble no matter what
The skill 1 guy would get +1 effect without gambling anything
The skill 2 guy would get +9 effect without any gambling
...and so on.

Edit: Oh, I should have read further on. This is essentially what you suggest with the soaking or? Couldn't it be better though if you simply added d6 together and then read from the table? That would mean every d6 actually was sure to add a little power.

Compare 1d6-2, 1d6-1 and 1d6:
Skill 1: 1/6/11
Skill 2: 9/31/53

I guess it's all about how you want the magic to act.

[Wormwood]

Daniel,

Well, it still looks to me that you should reduce those catagory sizes. They seem to significantly increase calculation time with rolls.

Now admittedly my suggestion about max rolled, +1 for every additional 5, migth work, but it's a bit grainy, and the lower rolls (5 and lower) are far easier than the higher (6 and above).

An alternative might be to to have the result being the sum of all the 5's and the highest subsequent die. This allows the addition to be easier, and at the same time permits a wider range. This should smooth out the probability curve a fair bit.

For example,

A roll of:

4, 5, 2, 5, 1, 3, 5, 3, 5, 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 1, 4, 3

at each step adds to:

4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13, 15, 18, 20, 21, 21, 23, 24, 24, 25, 26, 29, 29

It needs a bit of explaination, but it's a fairly simply procedure, and only requires handling one number (well the easiest way is to remember the number of 5's and the remainder value, so two much simpler numbers).


Hope that helps.


Pale Fire,

The idea of skill as the number that is ignored seems to be what Daniel was doing in his earlier post. However the fact that another person has independantly come up with it tells me two things:

I need to remember that 'soak' is not a generically understood term. I should have made it more accesible.

It is likely this idea is a good one, so it's further reason for Daniel to use that interpretation of skill.

Thanks for your input,

  -Mendel