fistful: cramming the dice

[johnzo]

I've been playing in Feng's TROS game at UGX. I'm having a lot of fun with it, and not just because Feng's an exceptional GM.  The system is really a fun one. This is a strange experience; typically, system doesn't matter much to me.  I kind of regard system like refereeing in a hockey game--if I notice it too much, it's probably not making me happy.  For me, classic CoC is a pretty ideal system.  It quickly answers the question of the moment and then gets the hell out of the way.

Back to Riddle: while lots has been written about the coolness of Spiritual Attributes, the one Riddle mechanic that I've really enjoyed is the red die / white die throwdown that happens at the beginning of every clash.  For the uninitiated, the throwdown works like this: both combatants take up a red or a white die, and on a count of three, they throw one of them down.  Red means the fighter is attacking, white means the fighter is defending.  This is a hugely meaningful decision in Riddle--it can lead to mutual kills, furious exchanges, and tense parleys.  I find I'm usually holding my breath when I throw my die.

I've been thinking lately about how to appropriate that thrill for a game of my own, and to make the most dramatic die-rolling mechanic I could.  I've noticed that games that use lots of dinky die rolls fritter away their drama. (d6 Star Wars requires four nd6 rolls to kill a stormtrooper, and the purportedly fast-fast-fast Savage Worlds takes three open-ended rolls to decide a single blow.)  So I'm trying to cram my dice with as much meaning as possible.  I also want to give players the opportunity to gamble; I want Fistful to reward big risks, while not necessarily penalizing more cautious players.  I want it to be fast and brutal and nerve-wracking--definitely on the Sim side.

One other thing: While I'm inspired by Riddle, I don't want to mimic its approach when it comes to combat.  I don't want detailed maneuvers that the players must study in order for their characters to succeed.  I want something that'll decide who hit and how hard, with the players and GM filling in the colour.

So here's my first try: http://www.johnzo.com/fistful .  It's not much more than a tiny bit of character definition and an extended conflict resolution system for now, but I think that'll be enough to get me through a first playtest.  

Has anyone any other examples of coloured-die mechanics?  I've seen Vincent Baker's Otherkind ( http://www.septemberquestion.org/lumpley/other.html ) and read about Dregg's Path of 5 Harmonies ( http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10105 ).

[John Harper]

I like where this is going. It's still pretty rough, but the core idea is sound.

Here are some random first-blush reactions:

- Hurry: This is a cool idea. However, it could get awkward in play. If it's already phase 10, and I want to use my die that came up 10, it's way too late to apply my skill to hurry and go on phase 5. So, players have to look at all of their dice each phase and see if they want to (or can) use any higher dice by hurrying.

- Damage calculation seems too complicated to me, but I have a *very* low threshold for that kind of thing. I know it's just comparison and subtraction, but it's not something I would want to do for every attack. That's lame feedback since it's so subjective, but there it is.

- Does "toughness" figure into damage in some way?

- I assume actions can be "held" in order to go at a higher phase? Systems like this often need such a mechanic so people can coordinate and do things in the right order.

- I really, really like how the GM doesn't have to allocate dice and can simply roll a big handful to represent the mooks. Do mooks ever have reserve defense dice?

- Using d20s. My gut-feeling is that d20s are going to be too random for this system. Die size would be a simple dial to adjust to taste, though.

Looking forward to seeing more of this, Johnzo.

[johnzo]

- Hurry: This is a cool idea. However, it could get awkward in play. If it's already phase 10, and I want to use my die that came up 10, it's way too late to apply my skill to hurry and go on phase 5. So, players have to look at all of their dice each phase and see if they want to (or can) use any higher dice by hurrying.

I'm hoping the players' interpretations of the situation and of their character's personalities will drive that decision very naturally.  The players will hopefully be asking "does the situation demand action now?  Do I have dice to spend?"  The GM can speed things along here by announcing a rigid closing of the hurry window on each phase, like the end of betting at a roulette wheel.

- Damage calculation seems too complicated to me, but I have a *very* low threshold for that kind of thing. I know it's just comparison and subtraction, but it's not something I would want to do for every attack. That's lame feedback since it's so subjective, but there it is.

Is it still a subjective reaction if I feel the same way?  This two-digit subtraction plus table lookup is hardly elegant.  I'll be searching for a better way to do this.

- Does "toughness" figure into damage in some way?

Not yet.  Neither does weapon power.  I've been thinking about whether to include either of those; I want to emphasize maneuver and risk over weapon and character power.

- I assume actions can be "held" in order to go at a higher phase? Systems like this often need such a mechanic so people can coordinate and do things in the right order.

Yup.  That'll be mentioned in v0.21.

- I really, really like how the GM doesn't have to allocate dice and can simply roll a big handful to represent the mooks. Do mooks ever have reserve defense dice?

This is one of the things I'm going round in my head about.  There can be two approaches: the GM rolls all the dice and simply uses some of their rolls to defend during the What Happens phase, or the GM divides dice between active dice and defensive dice before rolling.

The first is simpler on the GM; the second forces the GM into the same choice as the players and makes things a little richer.  Are the mooks cautiously popping up and squeezing off occasional shots?  If so, the GM can hold back 3/4 of his dice for defense.  Are the mooks Japanese marines in a banzai frenzy?  If so, the GM holds back nothing.

- Using d20s. My gut-feeling is that d20s are going to be too random for this system. Die size would be a simple dial to adjust to taste, though.

I suspect so too.  I was thinking d6's, but that would make phases very crowded and simultaneous actions would be very common.   Using a d20 also gives a wider range of effective skill values, but that probably doesn't matter except for advancement purposes.

d10s might be the answer, although I'll start with d20s and go from there.

[Zak Arntson]

I like the philosophy behind your design. Here are my comments:

Why two different dice for attack/task? Why not two different dice: Action and Movement. For that matter, why movement dice? What about just deciding between Action and Defense dice, where Action = Attack, Task, Movement, player's choice when it comes up?

I'd like to see skills do more than hurry/hammer; I'd like to see them be the crux of the system, as far as fun weird stuff you can do with your dice. Like change the face of a die by one "pip", change a die to match it with another rolled die, remove the opposing roll's dice, that sort of thing.

I agree with Feng on the resolution. The math takes too long. Instead of the GM rolling, you could have fixed target numbers (5,10,15,20, etc). But then you lose the fun Mook rule.

With lots of dice, consider that the easiest thing for a human to do is comparison (less than, equal, greater than). Comparison + add compared dice (not the values, but the actual number of dice that compared properly) is a quick option.

Anyhow, you're off to a fun start. Looking forward to seeing this develop.

[johnzo]

Why two different dice for attack/task? Why not two different dice: Action and Movement. For that matter, why movement dice? What about just deciding between Action and Defense dice, where Action = Attack, Task, Movement, player's choice when it comes up?

I like the chaotic results of games with all-plan / all-suffer-consequences cycles.  The Burning Wheel is splendid in this regard.  It takes simple input from multiple characters and creates complex, chaotic result sets with it.

As a player, I'm engaged by games where I get to plan my actions ahead a bit and make tradeoffs between them.  Through its dice-splitting, Fistful should hopefully model those complex, tradeoff-heavy character actions more organically than (say) remembering to apply a -4 to-hit modifier to sprinting characters, and disallowing them from automatic fire.

I could see players getting frustrated with Fistful's planning cycle, though, because the more dice you throw, the longer you're committed to them, and dice can become useless--like if a player rolls four movement dice on a horse that gets fatally shot before any of its movement dice hits their phase.  Choosing the dice-per-round number is gonna be key, I think.

I'd like to see skills do more than hurry/hammer; I'd like to see them be the crux of the system, as far as fun weird stuff you can do with your dice. Like change the face of a die by one "pip", change a die to match it with another rolled die, remove the opposing roll's dice, that sort of thing.

I think that ideas like this will start to flow once we get a bunch of people around a table and see the dice clattering.  Something about the physicality of dice gets the brain flowing.

thanks for the comments, Zak!