Die Pool Mechanic

[Walt Freitag]

We want the system to be as unobtrusive as possible. Very easy to learn, very invisible during play...

Isn't "I have Agility 3, so I roll 3 dice for Agility tests" less obstrusive, less difficult to learn, and less visible during play than "I have Agility 16, so I divide by 6, that gives me 2.666 which rounds up to 3 so I roll 3 dice for Agility tests"? You still haven't explained why you want the more stretched-out scale for Attributes. Based on what you've described so far, it doesn't give you more discrimination between different characters' strengths and weaknesses during play, only a flimsy pretense of it.

It may be jumping to conclusions, but without any rationale from you, it's natural to suspect that you're imitating Attribute scales from other systems (specifically, d20) from force of habit and no other good reason. That would be counterproductive, if your goal is uniqueness.

- Walt

Edit: By the way, is there a name we can use when addressing you? It feels kind of strange talking to a press.

[Homogenized Press]

We want the system to be as unobtrusive as possible. Very easy to learn, very invisible during play...

Isn't "I have Agility 3, so I roll 3 dice for Agility tests" less obstrusive, less difficult to learn, and less visible during play than "I have Agility 16, so I divide by 6, that gives me 2.666 which rounds up to 3 so I roll 3 dice for Agility tests"? You still haven't explained why you want the more stretched-out scale for Attributes. Based on what you've described so far, it doesn't give you more discrimination between different characters' strengths and weaknesses during play, only a flimsy pretense of it.

It may be jumping to conclusions, but without any rationale from you, it's natural to suspect that you're imitating Attribute scales from other systems (specifically, d20) from force of habit and no other good reason. That would be counterproductive, if your goal is uniqueness.

- Walt

Edit: By the way, is there a name we can use when addressing you? It feels kind of strange talking to a press.

Firstly, my name is Ed. I thought I had my .sig turned on, but Oops, me! :)

Second, the reason for scaling really has nothing to do with d20, but making the system scaleable. For example, gritty, cinematic, super.  If supers have to roll a die pool of 20 d6's, hands are sure to cramp. So I scaled it down. If a super has an Agility of 28, are you going to roll a die pool of 28? That's not feasible. I suppose I could use one scale and then improvise in other ways (through the use of skills, for example), but this seemed to make sense to me at the time.

Again, thanks for the input. It's greatly appreciated. Keep it comin'!

[Walt Freitag]

Hi Ed,

No, I'm saying that if a character has an Agility for which it would be appropriate for the player to roll 5 dice, it makes more sense for the Agility Attribute score to be 5, not 28.

(Please don't say "But then he'd only be rolling one die." I'm saying that the Agility of 5 should mean that 5 dice are rolled for it. Which gets rid of the dividing by six altogether.)

An Agility score of 7 that tells me to roll 7 dice is easier to handle than an Agility score of 28 that I have to do division and rounding to figure out how many dice to roll.

There's no difference in scalability or in the functionality of the system, it's just easier to use.

In your present system, a character with a Strength of 14 is no different than a character with a Strength of 12 and 10 more CBPs saved up. The character with a "lower" strength and the saved CBPs is actually better off, because he still has the option of spending the saved CPB points on whatever he wants while the "higher" strength character has already spent them and is getting no benefit yet. There is no reason in your system for any sensible player to ever have an Attribute score other than 3, 9, 14, 20, 26, 32, 38 and so forth (assuming .5s always round up), so you might as well just call those same Attribute scores 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7... which have the advantage of directly telling the player the number of dice that get rolled for them.

- Walt

[Homogenized Press]

Walt,

That's a very good point. I had thought about implementing a lower attribute score, but read somewhere that there were intrinsic problems with using a lower score attribute system (1's, 2's, etc.) -- perhaps it related to scaleability. But that doesn't really apply with dice pool mechanics.

I'm sure you're right and I'm trying to apply principles from somewhere else.

Thanks!

[M. J. Young]

There are several reasons for wanting to create a house system. The primary reason is because the games we have slated are very unique. It wouldn't do them justice to slap them under the OGL or another system. The game we're working on and those in the planning stages share similar ideas and concepts.

We want the system to be as unobtrusive as possible. Very easy to learn, very invisible during play, yet we don't want it to be diceless or not have a random element. It must also be flexible and have the ability of being modular.

Hi, Ed. I think you've misunderstood the direction of the question; in fact, your answer suggests you haven't really thought it through completely.

The games are "very unique", and it "wouldn't do them justice to slap them under" someone else's system, using the same system as so many other games. The problem here is that this points quite clearly to the conclusion that it would not do the games justice to slap them all under any "same system", even one of your own devising. That is, your reason for not wanting to use someone else's system for your games is an excellent one, but it's also an excellent reason not to develop one "house system" to use for all your games. It's exactly the same problem that caused you to reject other systems in the first place.

Take a look at the stuff coming from Memento Mori Theatrix, Vincent Baker's games, and the Adept Press collection. These authors are prolific. Each has several excellent games written and published, all of them excellent, and each built from the ground up with its own system customized specifically for play of the sort the game intends. Rather than tie themselves to a "house system" which would hamper what they could do, each of these authors has eschewed such a concept and considered in each case, how do I make this game work?

There are good reasons for using a house system; you haven't put one forward yet, and everything you've said about your games suggests that a house system would be the worst decision you could make.

Understand, this is not a question of whether you use your own system or someone else's, but a question of whether to create one system for all your games just like some other companies have done versus crafting each game system specifically to do what that game needs. Why would you tie your own hands by creating a house system for all your games, when each game is "very unique" and would be hampered by being saddled with the same system as some other game?

To look at it a slightly different way, let's consider that some of the best in the business created D20--Jonathan Tweet's name alone created incredible expectation for this release, and Monte Cook is quite respected, just to name two. GURPS comes from Steve Jackson Games, and is in its fourth edition, having been refined over two decades (longer, if you allow that it was the core engine of The Fantasy Trip) by people who have produced some excellent and successful work. The World of Darkness system is a new revision by some dedicated full-time game designers who had tremendous success with their original design and have had a lot of time to focus on how to improve it. None of these (nor Fudge, Fuzion, or any of several other games that offer licenses of one sort or another) are good enough to run your "very unique" games. Yet you expect that you're going to put together a single unified system that will do a better job than any of these across a significant variety of game design demands.

I think you're kidding yourself. I think that if all these games can be run on one system, the one you devise is not going to do that significantly better than all of those that are out there; if that's right, then either you've got another reason (probably haven't recognized it yet) for wanting a house system, or what you really need to do is abandon any notion of one system to run them all and turn your attention to crafting mechanics for each game individually, according to whatever it is that makes each game "very unique".

Are we communicating?

--M. J. Young

[Homogenized Press]

Hi, Ed. I think you've misunderstood the direction of the question; in fact, your answer suggests you haven't really thought it through completely.

M.J.,

While I think you make some very valid points, here's the crux:

All of the games we currently have planned are unique, yes, but mostly in the same vein. But that's only partly the reason for going for a unified rules system.

If you want to run a successful game company, you need to rely on the same group of customers coming back again and again, and bringing their friends who, in turn, come back again and again. If you publish games, each having its own mechanic, you run the risk of alienating your customers. I think Wizards realized this when they took over TSR. Unified mechanics are the trend, although slightly less so than five years ago (due to d20 glut). Some of the major industry players are either abandoning d20 in order to make their game more unique (realizing that the d20 market is so bloated) or slowly switching their goals to unified "house" systems (for the same reason). In essence, the market will become as fragmented as it was 10-15 years ago.

Working with a generic, "house" rules system affords you the ability to be consistent from game-to-game, enticing customers to buy new products. You can more easily work with writers who understand what you want because they'll be working under the same mechanic umbrella as everyone else.

As for building around other systems, there are currently only a handful of Open License systems available. D20 is the biggest. The rest are either unsuccessful, untested, unpopular or poorly-supported.

Thanks for your input, and I wouldn't mind debating the issue further.

- Ed

[btrc]

Let me toss in a few pithy and hopefully useful comments:

ATTRIBUTES
Each character is comprised of 4 Core Attributes. These are: Strength, Hardiness, Agility and Intelligence.

And for a system where realistic people have Attributes in the range of 10-12. Does:

ST
DX
IQ
HT

ring any bells? ;) I have to agree with a few other posters on the notes that:

1) Nothing presented so far is really unique.
2) No compelling reasons presented yet for a "house" system.

While I -really- like universal systems, for a one-shot game, specialized mechanics for -just that gameworld- will usually do a better job than a generalized system. Pendragon or My Life with Master come to mind. Yeah, I can do a lot with my Gerber multitool, but for a specific task I can do it faster and easier with a real screwdriver, wrench or whatever.

A house system is if you intend to release a lot of gameworlds or backgrounds that use that same system. More work up front to make a universal system to save time later.

You originally felt limited by d20. But have you actually checked out all the -other- open- or semi-open source systems out there to see if any of them can do what you want? Saves even more time if a system that has the characteristics you want already exists, and it doesn't hurt that the system already has a customer base looking for supplementary material.

Greg Porter
BTRC

[TonyLB]

Let me first say that I have complete sympathy with the dream of having a multi-national gaming empire.  I have the same dream on occasion.  It's pleasant.  But let's set that aside for a moment, 'kay?

You say all of your games are unique, but in the same vein.  Could you tell us what that vein is?  

If you can do that then we can more usefully give you feedback on whether your proposed system actually supports the type of play you're aiming for.

At the moment, I don't think you have a system with any meaningful content.  What you have is an inoffensive assortment of numbers that, if everyone agrees on their use, will help you to arbitrate the rules.  That's better than a sharp poke in the eye, but much less than a system could be.  It doesn't have any content that will help people to tell a story.

By comparison, check out Scarlet Wake.  It has laser-focussed content.  It is custom-made to create incredibly cool, over-the-top killers who have been dreadfully wronged and now seek revenge.  It does this very well.  You could try to make a mild-mannered librarian in this system, but odds are that after a few rounds of trials and tribulations you'll be playing an angst-soaked killer bookworm with spinning razor file-cards of doom, and loving it.

And Scarlet Wake is also very much universal.  Anywhere people are wronged and seek stylish, bloody vengeance, Scarlet Wake works great.  Its default setting appears to be modern-day Tarrantino blood-fests, but the folks playing in this Actual Play post decided to change the setting to a semi-magic, victorian steam-punk one, and seem to have had a lot of fun with it.  However, because of the system they ended up making ninja-witches and steam-cyborgs bent on quests of bloody retribution.

Personally, I think that's what you should be aiming for, whether you want to focus your game on one setting/situation or make it as universal as possible.  Making your game generic with regards to the trappings of the story does not excuse you from your responsibility to provide and reinforce a message that will inspire more enjoyable play and better stories.  That's the game designers job.

[Homogenized Press]

In all honesty, I don't think everyone understands my reasoning. This is probably in part because I've had very little sleep during the past week :) And I can't adequately put my thoughts into words (without sufficient coffee). I appreciate the criticism, suggestions, and input and invite the discussion to continue.

I'll try to do a better job of descibing my intentions:

1) I don't want to reinvent the wheel. But it looks like I'm up against a wall on this one. I'm very adamant about not going d20 or OGL (SRD) at this point. I've thought about it quite a bit and I see a change in the direction the industry is heading. There are more anti-d20 people now than ever, and I see it growing to a critical mass. While it may not be hurting WotC's sales (and probably won't for very simple and obvious reasons), other publishers see the change in the wind. With all due respect to Greg, the other OGL systems are either, as I've said, not very visible (for use of a better word), or are too constrictive in their licenses.

2) I don't want to build a better apple cart. I have no intention of building the end-all, be-all RPG mechanic -- just a simple and stable one we can customize, bend and twist without having to call in a team of lawyers. TonyLB: We have very realistic aspirations, believe me, which don't include becoming the big gaming empire. We just want to put out good games :)

3) The audience for our games isn't the typical roleplayer. We expect to get a lot of people new to RPG's picking up our games. With this in mind, we need a system that's simple, yet modular enough to grow with our customers.

The first post in this topic was only intended for the use as a sounding board. We spent 4 hours putting a base mechanic together, if that, and wanted opinions on its feasibility. Again, and I can't state this enough, I appreciate everyone's comments, suggestions and ideas. It's been very informative.

[Callan S.]

Hiya Ed, welcome to the forge!

*snip*The first post in this topic was only intended for the use as a sounding board. We spent 4 hours putting a base mechanic together, if that, and wanted opinions on its feasibility. Again, and I can't state this enough, I appreciate everyone's comments, suggestions and ideas. It's been very informative.

Okay, so I think were back to the 'what is it supposed to do' question. I'll give you a demo of what we (or atleast I would) mean by that. Here, tell me what you think of this mechanic.

Roll 1D10. If you get a 7+ you pass.

Now, say I want to run a game where hard core zombie cyborgs attack military instillations. So as to log on to military AI to live in a VR environment for a little while (before logging off to escape again) pretending their normal humans in a normal world. And its an examination of the gentle human interactions these undead killing machines are trying to reach.

What does my mechanic do to assist that?

What does it do to make the assault a rich tactics based option? How about tactics during the hacking? How about in the examinations between the zombies inner humanity...how does it bring that out?

We can not tell from '7+ passes'. We can't. And we can't tell much from a generic statistics. Really I think all we can help with with this amount of information is stuff like that 'instead of a stat of 12, use a stat of 2 (which equals two dice) if you want it to be more fluid'. You've gotten that help...so there's nothing else to give unless you give setting info.

[M. J. Young]

If you want to run a successful game company, you need to rely on the same group of customers coming back again and again, and bringing their friends who, in turn, come back again and again. If you publish games, each having its own mechanic, you run the risk of alienating your customers. I think Wizards realized this when they took over TSR. Unified mechanics are the trend, although slightly less so than five years ago (due to d20 glut). Some of the major industry players are either abandoning d20 in order to make their game more unique (realizing that the d20 market is so bloated) or slowly switching their goals to unified "house" systems (for the same reason). In essence, the market will become as fragmented as it was 10-15 years ago.

Working with a generic, "house" rules system affords you the ability to be consistent from game-to-game, enticing customers to buy new products. You can more easily work with writers who understand what you want because they'll be working under the same mechanic umbrella as everyone else.

I let this settle for a while; but I think I should say something in response.

If you want to run a successful game company, you need to rely on the same group of customers coming back again and again, and bringing their friends who, in turn, come back again and again.

Yes, but there is more than one way to do this.

I mentioned Mememto Mori Theatrix, Adept Press, and Lumpley Games. I doubt you could find any more successful "small" companies than these. Each of them presents the work of a single innovative designer.

Lumpley Games is best known for Kill Puppies for Satan. Designer Vincent Baker has also designed Dogs in the Vineyard, Matchmaker, and Nighttime Animals Save the World--all entirely different from KPfS, all getting very favorable reviews and comments from gamers. He's got other games as well, less known, and is working on more. People expect good games from him. He designs each game to do what he wants it to do.

Ron Edwards is the designer behind Adept Press. Sorcerer is the game that has never lost money--from the moment he made it available, it has been profitable. He has also designed Elfs and Trollbabe, entirely different from Sorcerer and also gaining praise. I don't know whether it was Sorcerer or his work in game theory or his support for other game designers here at the Forge which ultimately won him the Diana Jones Award, but people look for his next release eagerly, and he continues to produce games from the ground up to do what he wants them to do.

Jared Sorenson's designs for Memento Mori Theatrix include Eight, octaNe, InSpectres, Schism, and Squeam 3, all of them games people mention when talking about innovative wholistic design. For each game, he applies himself to finding the best way to do what he wants, and people look for that in his work.

I mention these people because they are independent game designers with entirely unique innovative products, and because people come back to them again and again specifically because they expect to find good games. They are living proof that if you publish a great game, people will come back for your next game even if it's entirely different from anything you've done before. You don't hold on to customers by providing more of the same; you hold on to customers by providing quality work.

The early TSR games tended to rely on very similar mechanics more because they were tried and true, and people weren't yet thinking outside these designs. Wizards of the Coast dropped many game lines not because of the potential for alienating customers but because when you're publishing on that scale you must keep your goals more narrow. Your argument that they saw the value in a unified system doesn't explain why they discontinued Planescape and so many other D&D settings that had solid followings. The problem was that when you're printing in the quantities Wizards needs to print to get that quality at that price, you need to assure that all of your core customer base will want at least most of your products. Alternity had the inherent problem that it was designed to support several variant game settings, and that meant they had to provide support for a smaller and smaller group of fans of each setting instead of being able to publish books "everyone needs".

Even your observation that unified mechanics are the trend is belied by the work at SJGames. In Nomine is nothing like GURPS, from what I've heard. Jackson is committed to supporting GURPS for all its fans, but when he was offered a good game that was different, he took it.

Quality will bring your customers back. Consistency in mechanics will only help that if you've got a truly great and flexible system that can do anything; otherwise, it will get in the way, and reduce the quality of the games you design as you force them to fit the mold of the house system.

As I've said, there are good reasons for unified house systems. White Wolf has such a reason--the ability to integrate all its games into one world, if desired (although a couple of them don't fit well). The reason for it at Steve Jackson Games is that they have a huge fan base for their materials and are able to integrate support materials across many settings (e.g., the recent GURPS Rogues provides templates for characters which would fit in any world, one way or another). Wizards has done it to attempt to consolidate their hold on the market by getting other companies to take the design risks for new settings, benefitting from the efforts of game designers they don't have to pay or even thank, and reinforcing the idea that they are the core of gaming (while cutting into SJGames market to some degree).

Your reason doesn't sound like more than "that's how these things are done" and "we hadn't really thought about it". Think about it. You can give gamers a better quality game now by being innovative in your approach to each game. Take a look at some of the work being done by the designers I've mentioned, and see how they make each game do what it's supposed to do.

As a footnote, when you tell me that you have a lot of "very unique" games, but you're still designing the single set of game mechanics that will run all of them, what I hear is that you have some interesting ideas for settings and situations, but only one game really, and you haven't designed that yet. Don't make the mistake many of us have made: don't be locked in to what you know. Look at what's happening on the edges, and learn from it.

I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young