Pre-Game Fortune = Fortuneless Gaming?

[Jonathan Walton]

I think I just stumbled across something really cool.

I was working on a set of diceless rules for Continuum, while still trying to reflect the original mechanics and allowing for the same experience system.  This was more difficult than I anticipated, because the Fortune mechanic in Continuum is directly tied to how experience works.

Basically, Continuum uses a standard "roll d10 under your attribute/skill" system, but every time you succeed at using an attribute/skill, you check off a box.  Once you've checked off enough boxes (10-40 for a skill, depending on the level, or 100 for an attribute) the skill or attribute goes up one point.

So, if I have a skill of 7, I should only be gaining "experience" 70% of the time I use that skill.  How could I simulate that without Fortune?  First, I though about something like this: use the skill 10 times, get 7 boxes checked off.  But then how would I deal with getting rid of the d10 rolls in the first place?

Finally, I stumbled across the interesting idea of what I'm calling "pre-game Fortune."  What this means is that all the Fortune in the game is determined before the game starts, letting play run without a Fortune mechanic of any kind.  Let me give a few examples to show how this might work:

Same scenario, I've got a 7 in the skill "History (USA c. 1975-2025)".  Before the game starts, I take a row of 10 circles (imagine something like how Willpower is treated on White Wolf character sheets) and mark off 3 at random, leaving 7 open.  So it might look something like this:

OOXOXOOOXO

The first two times the character uses the skill, he succeeds.  But, the next time, he'll fail.  Each circle/X serves to determine the results of a single "roll."  A character with a skill of 7 will automatically succeed 7 out of 10 times, exactly like you would suspect.

Now, in order to make things interesting, the GM would have to be the one who determined all this pre-game Fortune, having copies of the character sheets with "predetermined results" for each attribute or skill.  The players then, could never be sure if their next action was "scheduled" to be a success or failure.

I can see this having potential all over the place.  In a game where you were concerned about more than just success/failure, you could mark some boxes (say 1 in 20 or whatever) as a "critical success," "critical failure," or whatever else you wanted.

Of course, since system does matter, pre-game Fortune would work best in a game cosmology (like Continuum's) where a lot of things seem to be predestined.  That way, the idea of pre-determined failure and success would not be quite so jarring and arbitrary seeming.  however, since the players would be the ones deciding when to use a certain skill or ability, it would seem to still place the power in their hands.

Obviously, there could be a few problems with players memorizing their success/failure charts as the game goes on, or being able to deduce if a specific ability was "scheduled" to succeed or fail, but there are definitely ways around that.  Commonly used abilities would need longer strings of boxes to make them less predictable (could a player memorize 50-75 boxes?  only if they REALLY wanted to).  Also, you might want to pre-generate a new "Fortune string" for each ability before each session.  This may seem like a ton fo work, but hap-hazardly marking off boxes is not that hard, and you could easily develop a computer or calculator-assisted method that would ease the pain.

So, what do people think?  Is it as viable an option as I think it is?

[xiombarg]

So, what do people think?  Is it as viable an option as I think it is?

I think it's viable, but I'm not sure it's not a fortune mechanic. Since it uses a D10, instead of doing it by player and skill, you could just have a table of digits that you lookup in each case, loke those old fashioned random number tables. Regardless of how you do it, I'm not sure I see how it's all that different from a normal fortune mechanic -- it's still random, just random ahead of time. So it ain't that different from normal Fortune.

Now, if you use this method to somehow "fix" the odds -- well, I guess that's sort of form of Illusionism, isn't it?

[Le Joueur]

I was working on a set of diceless rules for Continuum, while still trying to reflect the original mechanics and allowing for the same experience system.  This was more difficult than I anticipated, because the Fortune mechanic in Continuum is directly tied to how experience works.

Basically, Continuum uses a standard "roll d10 under your attribute/skill" system, but every time you succeed at using an attribute/skill, you check off a box.  Once you've checked off enough boxes (10-40 for a skill, depending on the level, or 100 for an attribute) the skill or attribute goes up one point.

So, if I have a skill of 7, I should only be gaining "experience" 70% of the time I use that skill.  How could I simulate that without Fortune?  First, I though about something like this: use the skill 10 times; get 7 boxes checked off.  But then how would I deal with getting rid of the d10 rolls in the first place?

Simple.

If you get 'experience' 70% of the time and you need say 20 'checks,' that works out to about 28 times to use the skill (succeed of fail) to go up a level.  This emulates the fact that about 8 times out of 28 you won't get a 'check.'  Or think of it this way; you make a 'check' for each success and an 'X' for each failure, where 20 'checks' raises your level.  What is the total of 'checks' and 'Xs?'  Roughly 28 (for a 'rule of thumb' level).

This can be calculated for every percentage of experience (N; as a decimal .70 = 70%) where a certain number of 'checks' are needed (needs Z checks; "10-40 for a skill...100 for an attribute").  Number of uses = Z / N; tweak it until just 'feels right.'  (Or you could just use the skill/attribute rating instead of percentile (N'); number of uses = Z x 10 / N').

That way the 'rate of increase' in skill will remain effectively the same as 'regular' Continuum.  But I do like the rest of your idea about pregenerated Fortune (except the paperwork); we tried something similar for our LARP Mechanix.  How about this?  Let the players have and maintain their 'probability lists' and make everything an opposed roll.  That way they can never be sure that their 'high number' will be automatically successful.

There are two ways to handle this.  In the first let them pick whichever number off their list (I think something like this has been suggested here, some time ago) and when they 'use it' they mark it off.  Then their 'rolls' become a precious resource that they might want to be careful where they use their 'best numbers.'

The second I call the 'Jan-Ken-Po' method.  In simplest terms, each player has a 'pre'-randomized list (rock, rock, scissors, rock, paper, paper, scissors, you get the idea).  Each time they perform a 'check,' they use the top one on the list (all above it are 'checked off'); every action is opposed and there is absolutely no way to know whether the next one will succeed or fail because we're not using something so qualitative as numbers.  Now to make things more interesting replace the rock, paper, and scissors, with a larger number of things that interrelate differently (not simply 'one win, one loss') to make it more unpredictable (or to make more use of skill/attribute ratings).

Hope you have luck in this pursuit!  It's a really interesting topic.

Fang Langford

[Jonathan Walton]

Kirt:

Yes, this is totally a Fortune mechanic.  The point was that handling all the Fortune before the game starts eliminates all Fortune from the actual play of the game.  It becomes a straight comparison system, as in Amber.  It is very much like consulting a random number table (ah, memories of Lone Wolf...), but I'm hoping to make it a little more interesting than that.

Fang:

Great point about "opposed comparisons" (that's really what Paper, Scissors, Rock is all about, ultimately).  The only problem would be how to run that.  You could use playing cards numbered 1-10 and have players choose one and then flip them over at the same time.  I just think it'd be hard to manage verbally.

Also, I think some interpretation would make the mechanic slower, but more interesting.  If, instead of playing cards, players got hands of Tarot cards (or Candyland-style color cards) and had to choose when to play them, the results would be more meaningful, but less objective.

I also think your point about player-managed "Fortune lists" is a good one.  I could especially see this working in something really epic and over-the-top like Torchbearer or Exalted.  If you went with a normal fail/succeed list like I described earlier, you could even LET THE PLAYERS KNOW that the next time they try a Wuxia "roll," they're going to fail horribly.  That allows them to choose when to have that occur, but if they save up that failure for too long, someone else might force them to use it (by attacking them, say), making them use it at an inopportune time.

Your suggestions about the experience mechanic in diceless Continuum were also very helpful.  But since that's a little off-topic I'll just quietly steal them and ponder how I'll adapt them :)

[damion]

1)The obvious way to do this is if you have a computer or PDA you could make something to do the charts pretty easy. When a 'sequence' runs you, you just reshuffel it.

2)A problem is not only can players memorize their lists, they can guess based on the pattern of success/failure. Unlike normal probability, a persons intuition that 'I've failed 3 times now, I gotta succede soon' is correct. I.e. they will have a few at the end where they know the outcome. You can make longer sequences to reduce this, but it probably wouldn't be to hard to figure out the sequence length. (The shortest length where the s/f ratio holds).

[Jonathan Walton]

A problem is not only can players memorize their lists, they can guess based on the pattern of success/failure. Unlike normal probability, a persons intuition that 'I've failed 3 times now, I gotta succede soon' is correct.

Is this necessarily a problem, though?  Doesn't it work that way in real life, or at least seem to?

"Man, has this day been crappy, but it's bound to improve sometime..."

Fate may be fickle, but there's usually some ups after all the downs.  I could see this working very dramatically in some cases.  Imagine a kung fu action flick where the character succeeds in the beginning, then gets the snot kicked out of them right before the final climax.  Then, in the last fight, the character manages to pull through, with a series of stunningly-impossible moves.

And, like I said, this would only be a problem for abilities you used a great deal.  If you're only going to "roll" your History skill once or twice a game, a sequence of 10 results would be plenty to keep things seeming random.  Still, sequence length is a big deal.

[damion]

A problem is not only can players memorize their lists, they can guess based on the pattern of success/failure. Unlike normal probability, a persons intuition that 'I've failed 3 times now, I gotta succede soon' is correct.

Is this necessarily a problem, though?  Doesn't it work that way in real life, or at least seem to?

"Man, has this day been crappy, but it's bound to improve sometime..."

Eh, I got the impression you thought that players knowing future results wasn bad. My point was they, can unless you use really long sequences. Is it a problem? I dunno, as you mentioned, it's good in some ways, but there are easier ways to get the effect. It also adds a weird element of possible gamism. I think you'd have to try it. I'd also be concerned about the search/handling time of the sequences (mainly, creating one/skill/pc, seems like alot). You also can't take into account situational modifiers.

[Mike Holmes]

How is this any different, really than the oft discussed, roll before you play? Where you just record a whole buncha rolls. It's almost exactly the same (except for haing the predictability flaw).

Jonathan, you can say that this is "Furtuneless" but it does't change the fact that in play it effectively is fortune. If I don't know what the next result is, I have to play as though it were random. Which means that in effect teh only difference between these systems and random is that you don't use a randomizer on the spot.

All seems very semantic to me. What is the goal?

If you like the "predictable fate" thing, and you are using opposed comparisons, then you can use the very cool card thing. Basically, allow a player to have a hand of cards with various numbers on them. He plays these as he likes. The hand only redraws when it runs out, however. This allows a player to have some control over when the PC looks good and when he doesn't mind failing. Given the randomness of the opposing play (especially when you allow for trumps and other complexities), even when playing a high card, the player isn't garunteed a success, nor a failure on a low card.

Mike

[talysman]

I think you should call this technique "Fortune Way in the Beginning".

(heh. ok, maybe not, since technically the Fortune occurs at the normal time, but the task of randomizing occurs before play.)

here's another suggestion that might reduce paperwork: essentially use a rock-paper-scissors, as suggested previously, but based on letters rather than numbers, with alphabetical order determining precidence (A beats B, B beats C, etc.) to keep anyone from stacking the deck in their favor, alternate "alpha order" and "reverse-alpha order" for conflict resolution. use opposed roles for everything, as already suggested.

the gimmick? the letters come from the character's name or from a "secret word" selected before play. the opposed role is likewise determined by either a name or a secret word; players do not necessarily know the word before conflict begins, but they can guess it, in which case they can work together as a team to match the next letter in a winning way.

[talysman]

ooops, some additional thoughts on that variant:

if you use secret words, you can work on the principle that the word must be in the dictionary and must be descriptive in some way of the character, opponent, object, or place involved. players could write one- or two-sentence descriptions of their characters and select the secret word from the nouns, adjectives and adverbs in that description. maybe you could also require that the word must be at least 5 letters long.

if you use names, the system would work really well for a setting where True Names matter. finding out an opponent's True Name gives players a chance to plan their attacks to be the most effective.

of course, a True Names game mechanic would maybe be easier if it were adapted to a "letter pool" technique instead of a "one letter at a time" technique. in this variant, you would match each letter of someone's name against the equivalent letter of the opponent's name, truncating the longer name to match the size of the shorter name. the result is the number of successes. thus, JONATHAN versus MIKE would be resolved by truncating JONATHAN to JONA, then comparing letters:

          J comes before M = Jonathan's success
          O comes after I = Mike's success
          N comes after K = Mike's success
          A comes before E = Jonathan's success

in this case, they would be evenly matched... but suppose you allow carrying over successes? Jonathan could try to use something in the environment, pitting his name against the name of the object, gathering successes, then make his move against Mike.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Jonathan,

Great point about "opposed comparisons" (that's really what Paper, Scissors, Rock is all about, ultimately). The only problem would be how to run that. You could use playing cards numbered 1-10 and have players choose one and then flip them over at the same time. I just think it'd be hard to manage verbally.

Also, I think some interpretation would make the mechanic slower, but more interesting. If, instead of playing cards, players got hands of Tarot cards (or Candyland-style color cards) and had to choose when to play them, the results would be more meaningful, but less objective.

Greg Porter's Epiphany has what I think are fantastic mechanics very much along these lines. Essentially, a character goes into a conflict with a number (less than 10) that represents his relevant advantages. All conflicts are opposed. The player divides his advantages between attack and defense and throws out his fingers to display how he's apportioned them, with the right hand being "attack" and the left hand being "defense." The GM does the same. The result is interpreted, based on comparison of player attack vs. GM defense and GM attack vs. player defense. So it's possible to achieve total victory, total failure, or degrees of success with consequences, all from a combination of Karma plus resource allocation mechanics.

Paul

[Le Joueur]

Guys,

Yer taking the Jan-Ken-Po thing too literally (or missing the point by putting numbers to it).

How about an example; I remember this variant of rock-paper-scissors (the english name for Jan-Ken-Po) that I think of as 'match.'  Basically another option is added, the match; match burns paper and it strikes on rock, but is cut by scissors.  It 'unbalances' the whole game.  Now rock loses to two (match and paper) and wins one (scissors), same for paper; scissors and match both win at two.  Who would pick rock or paper?  You don't, here they're pregenerated.  You could get pretty 'unbalanced' that way.

What good is being 'unbalanced?'  There are a number of things you could do.  One example is different 'unbalanced' rates could be applied.  Say one of the symbols beats 8 out of ten of the others; that becomes a result not generated for a 'low skill level.'  (Of course there'd be a lot of design work, but it sets off my 'calculus student sense,' so I think it's possible.)

Another possibility is you could layer it.  Say 'high' skill levels put a 'rider' on the symbol predetermined.  Thus maybe match beats rock normally, but when its a 'high' skill it becomes 'rock prime' which doesn't lose to match.  Really any number of non-numerical possibilities exist, I just wanted to shake up the thinking a bit.

And on the point of numbers...you could also do something like this here too.  For example, just put the numbers on a loop.  An 8 < 9 and 9 < 10, but 10 < 1 and it goes on around.  It isn't simply 'who has the higher number,' because when the number are more than 4 apart it gets switched (the direction around the circle is always the shortest path).  That way high numbers are more tenuous; sure a 9 beats an 8...and a 7, 6, and 5, but a 10 beats it...and so does a 1, 2, and 3 (you might even do something special when it's on the 'opposite side').  Basically, shortest way = clockwise is a win, shortest way = counterclockwise is a loss.  You're still using numbers, just in a unique way.  There are tons of applications.

Not that any of these is necessarily of use here, mostly supplied as a curiosity.

Fang Langford

[talysman]

Fang,

adding "match" to "rock-paper-scissors" unbalances the game if you let it, but why let it? the kibologists play rock-paper-scissors-spock-lizard, and it's completely balanced. but that's not the point. the point is that rock-paper-scissors, or straight higher/lower using numbers or letters is essentially a "conflict results table" that everyone has memorized already. as such, it's a possible method for generating random numbers beforehand without introducing any complicated rules, table look-ups, or onerous bookkeeping.

[Wormwood]

Jonathon,

I've was playing around with that idea a while back, for a game set in a very fate-centered setting. Namely using a list of d20 results in this case. It didn't specify a list for each person, and part of the fun was getting to know the pattern. Part of how the game mechanics worked was that a more skilled character used the next several values, taking the highest, while a less skilled character took several and then the lowest.

Regardless though only one value was removed from the list, the top one. So it was possible for several characters (on either side) to share the same stroke of luck, good or bad. I was trying to merge in a preset critical, but that proved a little complicated (due to how I was handling criticals in the general system).

There was also a mechanic that let you burn more valued from the list, but that was mostly a by-product of increasing your rolls.

For example:

A - skill +1
B - skill +3
C - skill -2
D - skill 0

given the list of values:

12
9
7
18
6

A acts first, and get either the current value or the next one, which ever is highest, so he gets a 12. B then acts, and she gets the highest of the current and the next three. That is 18.

After A's action the list becomes:

9
7
18
6

After B's action it becomes:

7
18
6

So when C acts she gets a 6, (the lowest of the current and the next two). Making the list:

18
6

When D acts, she just gets 18, since that's the current number. So she manages to share B's good luck, and avoid C's bad luck, as it were.

As far as it being fortune, it's tactical fortune, what ever that means. A far better question, is what is it called if you play a game of chess to determine success or failure on an action? Is that fortune?

Well, hope that is food for thought.

 -Mendel S.