Aisling - mechanic review, please? <LONG>

[taalyn]

Hey all,

Here's my writeup for the Aisling mechanic. Would anyone be willing to critique it?

How To Do It

Whenever a charactert attempts an action whose outcome is significant to the story, or which the character has a significant chance of failing, the player will draw motes from their character's caern to determine whether they succeed or not. The GM will determine a difficulty level (DL) for the task, which indicates the number of successes the player must draw.

The player draws a number of motes equal to their hand (the numerical strength of a skill), hoping for motes the same color as the skill. For every mote that matches that color, the player earns 2 successes. For every mote of a color adjacent to the target color, the player earns 1 success. There are 7 main colors in a caern: red (R), amber (A), green (G), cyan (C), blue (B), magenta (M), and clear (X).

Derek's character Jonas is trying to shoot the approaching spriggan. The GM rules this an average task with a DL of 2. Jonas has Pistol M4, so Derek draws 4 motes, aiming for magenta motes. He gets BBGX. Each blue, because it is adjacent to magenta, counts as one success, for 2 total successes. The green and the clear don't count for any successes at all. Since he got 2 successes, equal to the DL, he succeeds, and shoots the spriggan.

Later, Jonas needs to climb a fence to escape the same spriggan, who is now very angry. Jonas doesn't have a specific skill in climbing, and his profession is librarian, which doesn't usually include climbing among its necessary skills. Derek resorts to his Nature (hand 3), and since climbing is an athletic skill, he needs to get red motes. The GM decides this is more difficult, since the spriggan is on his heels, and the fence is fairly high, so he assigns a DL of 4.  Derek draws three motes, getting RCB. He has 2 successes (for the red mote), but neither of the other motes will help. He doesn't get enough successes, and doesn't make it over the fence. He'd better think of something fast!

Within every caern are three Fates: a single white mote, a single black mote, and a single irridescent mote. These motes represent spectacular results when drawn. White (W) indicates a critical or automatic success, while black (K) indicates the opposite, a critical or automatic failure. Irridescent (I) indicates weird coincidence, unusual results, or magical sideffects.

Cornered in the alley, Jonas turns his clothes inside out to become invisible to the spriggan. Now he needs to sneak by spriggan as it looks for him. The GM assigns a difficulty of 5, modified to 4 by his invisibility. Derek draws 6 motes (his Dexterity), hoping for cyan. Derek draws: RAGCBW. He gets 2 for the cyan, and 1 each for the blue and the green, for a total of 4 successes, succeeding in sneaking past. But he also drew the white mote: a critical success! The GM decides that Jonas succeds as normal, but that all 4 normal successes can be counted as Boons.

Extra successes above the DL are Boons. Boons can be used in a couple of different ways. They can be converted into Luck at the rate of 3 Boons to 1 Luck, or they can be converted into Boon motes (3 Boons = 1 Boon mote), a bonus to any draw the player chooses.

There are several kinds of task resolution. Unopposed actions were described above, but not every action is free from interference or direct action against it. Arm-wrestling and melee combat are examples of opposed actions, where a character's success depends on another's failure. In opposed actions, there is no DL. The character must simply get more successes than their opponent. The range between the two draws characterizes the results of the task, i.e. winning by a small or large margin. If the range is greater than 3, Boons result from the remaining range successes.

Jonas escaped the spriggan, but later runs into him again in a coffee shop. The spriggan challenges Jonas to a race, appealing to honor. The winner will get one request from  the loser. Jonas agrees. Derek will draw with Jonas' Dexterity, drawing 6 motes for a target of cyan (Dexterity's color). He really needs to win, so he spends a Boon mote to draw an extra mote. He draws 7 motes, getting RAAGCBX, a total of 4 successes (2 from C, 1 from G and 1 from B). The GM draws with the spriggan's Dex 4, getting RGBX, only 2 successes. Jonas wins the race by 2 motes, a fair margin (but not enough to earn more Boons, unfortunately).


A Gather is a kind of test in which several draws are required. Used most often in magic, a gather can be used in other circumstances where a character is challenged continuously over time. Generally, the GM assigns a number of successes to be gained, and the character draws once per round (or other time unit). The GM may also apply a Difficulty Level in terms of rounds or time units, e.g. get 15 successes within 5 rounds. For particularly difficult tasks, the GM may require a certain number of Boons, with a normal DL, and with or without a time limit.

Jonas, tired of being harrassed by spriggans, decides to research their weaknesses. The GM decides that this is fairly common knowledge in the right circle, and that Derek will need 6 successes to find it. Drawing with Jonas' Librarian G7 Profession, Derek draws RRRABBX for the first hour's research. He got 1 success. For the next hour, he draws RGGCCMX, for 6 successes! It took Jonas 2 hours to find the information he needed.

[Lance D. Allen]

Okay, that clarifies a few things, then. I left a comment in your other thread about various rules you've discussed. So far this all seems sound, though. I do like the meta-mechanic of additional successes, over that required to succeed. Many games simply allow a stupendous amount of successes be left to GM fiat, or fall by the wayside.

Exactly what does Luck do? I remember there being some mention of spending 3 luck points to make a failure into a success, but details on how this was accomplished weren't given.

[taalyn]

Exactly what does Luck do? I remember there being some mention of spending 3 luck points to make a failure into a success, but details on how this was accomplished weren't given.

Thanks for the comments - I'll go notice the other comments you left in the other thread in a moment. For now, though, the questions at hand:

Luck - THE Thing. Motes are Luck, Magic is luck, Life is Luck, everything comes down to Luck. Other names for it include Qi, Ki, Prana, Odic force, etc. Sound familiar now? :) Without it, you'd die. Certain types of characters (Fae and Breed, types of Otherworldly beings) need X Luck daily to live. In normal humans, it is gained in dreams.

In game, it serves 2 main purposes. It powers the weaving of spells, and it can be spent to gain more motes for a particular draw (like Boon motes, 3 Luck for an additional mote). Way back when, you could spend luck equal to the number of successes you lacked to guarantee success, but it unbalanced things. My players never failed, unless I threw 40000 goblins at them. No fun.

Aidan

[greyorm]

I may have missed it when I read through the above (and I haven't gotten to the other thread yet, though I've parsed it quickly): what happens if you draw both the White and Black stone in the same draw?

[taalyn]

You didn't miss it - it's one of those things I forgot to explain and hope you all would notice!

What happens if you draw white and irridescent, or black and irridescent, should be fairly obvious. With white, a spectacular, coincidentally lucky shot. With black, one of the few ways another PC could be shot; a nasty fate.

If you draw both balck and white, there are 2 ways to handle it, at the player's prerogative. They can have them cancel out and result in a normal roll. Or they can assign one aspect of the task to the black, and one to the white.

For example, Jonas is arm-wrestling with yet another spriggan. Why, Derek only knows. He draws against a strength of 4, getting RCWK, red, cyan, white, and black. He opts to assign aspects, and decides his goal (winning) goes with white, and his health with black. He wins the match, but breaks his wrist in the process. Ouch!
Thanks to Wyrd for this idea! And thanks to you for pointing it out, Greyorm.

Aidan

[Lance D. Allen]

So what exactly is the difference between Luck and Boon motes?

[taalyn]

So what exactly is the difference between Luck and Boon motes?

Luck is more accessible than Boons, which are essentially weaker forms of Luck (metaphorically and literally). I should change the terminology, though, and simble explain that 3 boons is a luck mote, i.e. +1 mote bonus to draw. Thanks for pointing this out.