Spinoff from Pretender/Otherkind

[aplath]

Hello all,

I've been lurking here in the Forge for a while and finally the bug got me and I started my own little game design. :-)

It is really just a bunch of ideas on top of Otherkind and Pretender (with a little TROS thrown in) and I planned to test it before posting. But since my gaming schedule was put on hold due to me being sent out of town for a few weeks, I decided to post my ideas here and polish them a little before the actual test.

So here you go ...

Chargen system-wise would consist of picking two lists: one list of traits kind of like in The Pool ("World's greatest swordsman", "Lousy cook", "Wizard of the Red Brotherhood", and so on) and one list of what I'm calling Motivations but are really Spiritual Attributes like in TROS (his passions, code of behavior, destiny, conscience, etc...)

Conflict resolution would be a little like Pretender/Otherkind: the player rolls three d6 and distribute them among several categories that will define the outcome of the conflict. Whoever narrates the outcome must do so obeying the guidelines defined by the dice. Three of these categories are mandatory: Goal, Narration and Safety. The others are optional and can be called in by either the player involved or the GM.

I haven't compiled a complete list but the optional categories would include: Damage (to oponents and stuff), Damage (to third-parties present in the conflict or connections important to the PCs), Reaction (from third-parties, will people like you better or worse after the conflict). It would be nice to have a couple more categories here and I'm trying to figure them out. Suggestions are most welcomed. :-)

Anyway, all categories default to 1 which is the worse result in said category. In Safety for instance it would mean character death if the conflict was of a mortal nature. Besides the three dice rolled, the player may choose to re-roll any dice (including those that received none of the dice rolled and therefore default to one) based on his list of traits. So he might choose to re-roll one of his dice because his character is "The world's greatest swordsman". In exchange for that this trait should come up in the narration of the outcome.

The main diference to Otherkind and Pretender is that a roll of 6 in one category isn't the best possible result. Actually a 6 would only mean a marginal success with some complication thrown in. So it doesn't matter how many times you re-roll your dice, the best possible result would only be a marginal success. Unless ...

Well, unless the conflict is really meaningful to the character in some way so that he may use his Motivations. Each Motivation will have a die associated that may be rolled and ADDED to the die alocated to one category. This would allow the character to access the upper end of the scale that would be absolute success.

Right now I'm trying to figure out the best values. My first try will probably be with a scale ranging from 1 to 10 and the Motivation die being a d4. But a friend of mine already suggested broadening the range and allowing the Motivation die to be a d4, d6 or d8 depending on the situation (or on some measure of how "motivated" the character is in the conflict). The final choice will probably depend on the testing.

Two things about conflict resolution that I'm not sure if I'll use or not:

1) The re-roll really substitutes the die. It means that if you roll worse, well things get worse. And more than that, things will get worse BECAUSE of the trait used. But I still have to test this in play to see if things won't be too hard this way.

2) After all dice have been rolled and alocated, the player has a last resorce: he might sacrifice points from his character's safety and transfer them to other category. I'm not sure about this but it sure looks cool for stuff like the character jumping in the bullet's path to save someone. Another idea would be to let him sacrifice points from any category (but narration to avoid abuse).

Finally, multiple PC's in the same conflict are handled in one of two ways:

1) If each PC states a diferente goal, they roll separately and the whole thing is handled as multiple conflicts.

2) If two or more PCs state the same goal, they still roll separately (and alocate, and re-roll, all separately) and the outcome is narrated taking everything into account. This way, one character may die and the other leave the conflict unhurt and so on. It is enough that one of the character's reach the goal for the outcome to be "positive". After all, they are helping each other out. :-) However, the outcome should reflect exactly what the way the dice were alocated for each PC.

And there is narration: if one or more of the players gain the right to narrate, they will do so together. If all players fail to gain the right to narrate, the GM does so.

Oh, there will also be an Adversity factor which is basically a number of dice the GM rolls and then may use the results to lower the value in one or more PC's categories.

That's pretty much it right now. As I said it is just a bunch of ideas at this point. Comments anyone?

My main point of concern is how many steps to have in the scale and how far should it go. Is it worth to use different Motivation dice?

Also I'm thinking about a way to limit the number of re-rolls. Perhaps by limiting the number of traits? Or by limiting the re-rolls themselves?

Other than that feel free to comment the general idea. As soon as I have a chance to test this I'll post the test results too.

Thanks!

Andreas

[aplath]

I've just read the guidelines to post in this particular forum (I know, I should read those before posting...) so here is some information on where I am planning to go with this one:

1) Project Name: no name as of yet, but one will be surely coming in the near future.

2) Goal: the idea is to design a finished product in PDF form with decent layout, graphics and all. Since I'm building heavily on other people's work that is availiable for free on the web, I think it will be just fair to make this availiable for free as well as soon as it is finished. The idea is not only to design a game but go through the process to a finish product in order to learn with it.

I'm writing the game in portuguese which is my first language, but I intend to make it availiable in English too. That's why when time comes criticism from native english speakers will be very valuable.

3) Motivation: I've been looking for some time now for a system that supports narrativist gaming that both allows for player input and has mechanics that introduce interesting twists or at least force players to do some interesting choices.

I usually play The Pool, which is very cool, but it is a bit too loose for my liking now (though still my current favorite). When I read Otherkind and then Pretender I felt those were steps towards what I wanted but not quite it yet. So I decided to build upon those and this is the first draft of that work.

The main modifications I made on the original games is that I wanted a system that enhanced character effectiveness when stuff that mattered was at stake. That's why I introduced the Motivation rule based on the idea of Spiritual Attributes from TROS.

Also, something that disturbed me in both Otherkind and Pretender was the way that conflict was handed when one PC decided to help the other. My try at a solution is described above.

That's it. Thanks for your attention. :-)

Andreas

[Emily Care]

Hi Andreas,

Glad to see you de-lurk.  

Three of these categories are mandatory: Goal, Narration and Safety. The others are optional and can be called in by either the player involved or the GM.

I haven't compiled a complete list but the optional categories would include: Damage (to oponents and stuff), Damage (to third-parties present in the conflict or connections important to the PCs), Reaction (from third-parties, will people like you better or worse after the conflict). It would be nice to have a couple more categories here and I'm trying to figure them out. Suggestions are most welcomed. :-)

We've been using the Otherkind dice mechanic in our game a lot of late.  Our other most common category has been Safety of friends/allies.  For skilled tasks you could have Finesse (do I open the door with a quiet "snick" or do I slam it open alerting all in ear shot to my activities), and come to think of it, you could have multiple Goal dice. Say the conflict involved a scouting group trying to sneak its way back across enemy lines.  One die could represent progress toward the line, another could be for avoiding being seen. Then if they were discovered by enemy troops, the conflict could then change to fighting the enemy (with related safety/damage etc dice) but with the die towards crossing back into friendly territory being still in play.  But the priorities could now be very different.    

What the dice get used for seems very situational as well. The broad categories are good to give people something to work with, but what exactly they get rolled for could vary quite a bit.

Hope that's of some use.

best,
Emily Care

ps Good to hear from a gamer in your corner of the world.  I've been curious to hear more from South American gamers.

[aplath]

We've been using the Otherkind dice mechanic in our game a lot of late.  Our other most common category has been Safety of friends/allies.  For skilled tasks you could have Finesse (do I open the door with a quiet "snick" or do I slam it open alerting all in ear shot to my activities), and come to think of it, you could have multiple Goal dice.

Hi Emily, thanks for your suggestions. Good ideas. :-)

What the dice get used for seems very situational as well. The broad categories are good to give people something to work with, but what exactly they get rolled for could vary quite a bit.

Yes, I've been thinking about this. My idea is to have a number of categories (is this a good word for this?) that forces the player to make choices and, at the same time, doesn't overwhelm him.

I am sure that a better feeling of where the right balance is will come through testing, so I'm looking forward to test it. Damn business trips ... ;-)

Hope that's of some use.

Oh yes, please keep them coming. :-)

ps Good to hear from a gamer in your corner of the world.  I've been curious to hear more from South American gamers.

Well, there are a lot of us. :-)

Currently I'm not following very closely the gaming scene here in Brazil, though I used to when I was in college. As you might expect we've got a lot of D&D and Storyteller going on. Vampire was huge here when it came out for the first time and we still have a lot of LARP groups that formed at that time.

Other than that we have a few local RPGs, some of them cool, some of them bad. Most of them would qualify as fantasy heartbreakers as Ron calls them. But it is much more easy to get into the hobby today than it was when I started playing 15 years ago. Back then you had to import the books and today you have most of the mainstream material in portuguese, at least in big cities like São Paulo.

But these days the hobby occupies a much smaller part of my time. At least while my kids are too young to even get interested in it ... ;-) But when I'm not away traveling (I do that a lot at my job) I usually play once a week.


Andreas