ChronoStat: a stopwatch based game mechanic

[DevP]

This started out with the realization that one could use a chronometer as a d100 randomizer; then I had more thoughts (inspired by bits of action movies and Wushu)... So here are some premature thoughts! (This system is mostly about combat at this moment.)

Classify actions as 5 types:
Active Muscle: punching, hitting, and other standard combat things
Reactive Muscle: blocking, countering, feinting
Active Reflexes: Doing dextrous activites, drawing/wielding stuff, firing tings
Reactive Reflexes: dodging incoming things, recovering from a blow or knockdown
Movement, which is somewhat a fifth kind of action...

So we have AM, RM, AR, RR, and MV as our kinds of activity. I give the probabilities of Critical Success/Average Success or Failure/Critical Failure as such:
MV: 10 / 80 / 10 (Movement is pretty easy.)
AR: 25 / 75 / 25
AM or RM: 33 / 34 / 33 (You'll see why I make these identically hard soon.)
RR: 10 / 10 / 80 (Dodging stuff can be hard!)

Next question: what do these results mean? Generally speaking, the player gets to narrate the critical hit or critical failure. (The GM may opt for the failure, depending on the crowd.) Average results are tersely explained by the GM, but are not so interesting.
MV: You get +1 Combo Chip* for your momentum! / you move successfully / you stumble in an awful fashion.
AM: Your hit gets throw and shows an appreciable effect / Your hit either goes through but does little, or is easily blocked; you're still okay / Your rival counters your hit and floors you.
RM: You counter your enemies hit and floor him / you easily block a strike, or just flinch a little / You get hit pretty bad.
AR: Your hit really matters, and takes the guy down / You either get a "shoulder hit" (like in the movies); or you miss, but were close enough to make the guy dodge away and lose his balance / You totally miss, and may jam or perhaps are leaving yourself open; your enemy may return fire at you.
RR: You succeed, and momentum gives you a +3 Combo Chips* / You survive, and get +1 Combo Chip / You are hit.

So, the majority of the "average" results may or may not have a color description of success, but they either knock the opponent in the gut or are blocked by an arm. No real effect. Also, notice that AM and RM attacks do about the same thing. Perhaps AM Crit Fails will just cause you to be really vulnerable, and RM Crit Fails mean you actually take a hit; but I hope that I do encourage players to bring in their own opponent's attacks to react to. (Narrating potential problems as well as their ultimate victories.)

(So far, we have a bland d100 system, but here is where I try to make it novel. <g>)
Players should give their AM, RM, AR, RR and MV each one of the following numbers: 2, 3, 5, 7, 10. (Lower is better.)

Now, once combat starts, start the stopwatch. Players can do an action whenever they want (they can just speak outloud if they're doing a simple movement; if they're doing some kind of stunt, they should knock the table); the GM will stop the watch and let the player declare her action. The hundredth fractions of a second determine the success of the action. Also, if the SECONDS are a multiple of the number they put by that action type, then they get to DOUBLE this number.

If you try to Fire at an enemy and your AR is 3, then if the time is 3.40 sec, then you have scored an 80: Critical Hit! And so on. The GM should let a few seconds elapse, about the time equivalent to the execution of the move, and keep going on. If their AM and RM have different ratings, then the player may take the gamble of narrating an attack on themselves. hoping to score a counter back at the opponent.

You can add on some modifers to most of the tasks:
+25 for clever moves / good roleplaying / tactical advantage / executing a move you have a particular flair for
-25 for dumb moves / tactical stupidity / a move that you logically would have trouble executing (an uppercut while trying to get up, for example)

Task difficulty could alternately be made up ad hoc, based on what percent of the target (approximately) is "covered". In close clombat, consider what % of the body is worth hitting, and what % of that is probabilistically protected by blocking, and so on. In ranged combat, base it on how much of the target is covered, or how fast they are moving (how much of a second they spend in a given frame of reference, for example).
As for other character traits and skills, perhaps add up all of those numbers they put by their 5 stats, and multiply it by 10: these are the number of points they can put into whatever "traits","backgrounds","attributes" or "skills" they come up with; these are resolved on a stanard d100 (using a stopwatch if you want), where scoring higher than your skill level indicates a success. (Mitigate with modifers as necessary.) However, these skills will generally not be put in to use in a combat siutation as such. (So having a 70 point skill in firearms doesn't matter in a "heated" combat situation.)

*Ah, those Combo Chips. Each Combo Chip you use lets you execute an extra move at the same moment; all moves executed this turn act as if it's their beat (i.e. they're all doubled). So, you declare that you're jumping behind a crate for cover, and spend 3 combo chips to fire 3 shots in slow motion: the timing is at 47.29s, 47.35s. 47.41s, 47.43s. Since everything counts as doubled, then you get scores of 58, 70, 82 and 86. The dodge is sucessful, one shot grazes a target, and the last two are Critical hits.

Now that I've written it all up, I can forsee that it may be good to allow movement whenver it's declared (rather than making than action with successes in this way), and using the RR for interesting stunts; this would encourage players to come up with smart RR situations in order to earn Combo Chips. (Essentially, perform some bullet-time-style dodging to earn a responsive Combo attack.)

MY RATIONALE: LACK OF MEANINGFUL COMBAT STATS

Well, I just didn't feel like looking up double-digit stats for the characters everytime they do something. <g>

MY RATIONALE: AM v. RM

Ideally, this will encourage players to narrate their own combat against the extras. The GM can always just act on the behalf of the extras when he wants to, of course. Bosses may deserve being actively played by the GM (perhaps with some Combo Chips saved up.)

~~~

There, done. I may as well mention that I envisioned this for kinda gritty noir crime combat. What do you all think?

[contracycle]

Clever, I like it.  Well spotted on the use of the clock to do d10 and d100 simultaneously.

[DevP]

bonus Rationale: Those numbers I picked

So, I picked 2/3/5/7/10 because I find those numbers really easy to remember. That said, I realize now that it's pretty easy to figure out multiples of numbers less than 60. (My mind is just slightly quicker with these numbers above; go ahead and allow whichever you like. <g>)


Other details to flesh the idea out: aside points gained from what numbers you give your AR/RR/AM/RM/MV, you could start off with a base of 50 points; allow players to take on flair and one weakness, both approved by you, both of which give a + or - 25 in specific combat situations. Also, treat special connections and resources are traits (just like any other) with a probabilistic chance of "success".

I'll type this up more formally once I get more criticsm.

[Mike Holmes]

One problem I see is that the ratings that effect your ability to do something seem to come into effect only relatively rarely. That is, even the best rating only improves your roll 50% of the time. As such, they represent a small boost that occurs occasionally, and the rest of the time everybody is like everybody else.

How about rating by 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 (best to worst), and then this represents the difference that the seconds digit and last digit can have between them when the smaller is subtracted from the larger and have the doubling still occur. Thus, if my AR digit is at the max value of 5, and I get a seconds result of 19 or 9 effectively, any result of the last digit from 4 to 9 is a doubling (9-3 = 6 is greater than the 5 so doubling would not occur). OTOH, if the stat were 1 and the seconds digit  9, then it would only succeed on a 8 or 9.

Basically the odds of doubling would be:
1    28%
2    44%
3    58%
4    70%
5    80%

You're still mostly influenced by the percentile roll, but at least there's some regularity to the doubling.

Also, I assume AR is 25/50/25? In any case, if you used the above (and even if you don't), you might want to increase the level at which crits occur. Seeing as rolls range to 200 with substantial regularity.

Mike

[DevP]

How about rating by 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 (best to worst), and then this represents the difference that the seconds digit and last digit can have between them when the smaller is subtracted from the larger and have the doubling still occur. Thus, if my AR digit is at the max value of 5, and I get a seconds result of 19 or 9 effectively, any result of the last digit from 4 to 9 is a doubling (9-3 = 6 is greater than the 5 so doubling would not occur). OTOH, if the stat were 1 and the seconds digit 9, then it would only succeed on a 8 or 9.

By last digit, do you mean the last digit at which the timer was stopped? (Or are you comparing the seconds digit with the hundredth digit?)

As for crit hits: especially with all the doubling, it makes sense to require a score greater than 100 (at least) to get a critical.

So, when I typed this up in a fury, I thought I saw a mechanic that was something more than merely generating a d100 via a stopwatch, which would use the passage of time itself as a mechanic. I'll need more thought to make something worthwhile out of this; I'll update as I think of stuff.

Here's a thought: the game mechanic allows for relatively constant (and memorizable) hit/miss checks. However, the play goes in some notion of order (players in a circle, the GM interrupting as desirable) where everyone annotates an action they do, and for the most part it should happen as such, as long as it does not connote some permanent damage or permanent change in the "status quo".

"I run below the deck"
"I fire a few shots at them while running" [implicitly in a lazy fashion]
"He kicks you up against the wall."
"I throw him to the ground."

The result of these is some color, but also the choice of narrative creates the tactical environment, with dis/advantages for players. That is, if the player narrates throwing an enemy to the ground versus kicking them to a wall that's a few feet away from them, it does not mean that the enemy is really any closer to defeat, but it changes what the GM can reasonable narrate for them to do. (If he's up against a wall but has a gun, he may be able to fire at the player; this is less possible if he's on the ground.)

The GM stops time (as a success check) if: (a) the move breaks the status quo (could actually hurt someone; (b) the move is overly hard; or (c) is obviously described as a combo or specific strike that should break the status quo. Example:

"I fire squarely at his shoulder." (a)
(After being knocked to the ground by the narrative) "I roll back and recover!" (b)
"I fire three shots at him as he runs." (c)
"I punch him in the face, turn my elbow upside his chin, and plant my other fist into his sternum." (c)

So when time is stopped, there is the possibility that the move will change to status quo by removing a rival from combat (if enough good hits are delivered). It is possible that players can choose what kinds of actions allow them to combo as such. (They might pick one or two easily remembered kind of actions in which combos like those above are possible.)

It should be noted that with combos, the time shoudl be stopped in quick succession for each attempted action. The results arguably have interesting progressions involved (hit, miss, hit should rarly come up if at all):
close hit/miss, good hit, great hit
good hit, critical hit/miss, miss
miss, hit, good hit

On top of this: you add the seconds you have to your score, and 10 more points for each elapsed minute. This does create a wierd kind of stepped progression, but it goes continually upward. The point of this is that the longer combat goes on, the more "serious" and desperate it may get. In action movies, the first flurry of moves or shots will often miss, but eventually blocks and dodges will fail, and the scene will end.

There are many rough edges and flaws, but at this point we have: no statistical character creation (1), a roughly collective narrative moderated by the GM ability to create task checks, increasing "dramatic impact" dependent on the elapsed time, and some continuity between connected actions.

((1) This is something of a negative, too; perhaps modify difficulties based on the relation of a task to the character concept, on the fly?)

Thanks for listening; I hope this was cogent.

[DevP]

For future reference, does this belong in RPG Theory?

[Brian Leybourne]

Yes, unless this is a specific game you're going to continue working on. If it's just an idea for a system etc (as it seems to be), then it belongs in RPG theory.

Brian.

[Mike Holmes]

By last digit, do you mean the last digit at which the timer was stopped? (Or are you comparing the seconds digit with the hundredth digit?)

The latter.

What you have above seems neat, but I'm sure is going to require some extensive playtesting to get right.

In any case, would this just be a generic mechanic, or did you have a game in mind for which it would be used?

Mike

[DevP]

It was a mechanic for primarily fast urban gunfights in the vein of Grity Crime Action (TM), I suppose.