[Dulcimer Hall] Another shot at Resolution

[TonyLB]

Okay, first go read the Hybrid Resolution document to see where I'm starting from.  Now go read [Dulcimer Hall] Crypto-romance Character Development to see what I want to achieve with changes.  That's the groundwork out of the way.

Characters have a fixed pool of six-sided dice in their color.  Let's say 12.  That is all that will be on the table.  When they win Conflicts, those dice get traded to other people.  So they want to get them back.  Because if they run out, it gets really hard for them to be effective.

Rules Change #1:  Characters have Perceptions about other Characters.  So Shane, callous mastermind, might have a Perception "Ada:  Weak-minded moralistic simpleton", at level 3.  Any die you accept from another character must be stored on one of your Perceptions about that character.  No more dice may be stored than the level of your Perception.  So in this case, Shanes player could take up to 3 of Ada's dice and store them on his belief that she's a moralistic fool.

Rules Change #1 is intended to establish a link between the Character Development ideas being worked out, and the resources of the Resolution system.  Does it seem to work for that?

Those dice, once they are taken by Shane, are absolutely under the control of Shane's player.  There is no way for Ada to forcibly take them back.  However, they don't do Shane any good just sitting there (except inasmuch as they cripple Ada by their absence).  He has two ways of spending them:[list=1][*]At any time he may give a die back to Ada, and then reroll one die in an Effort Pool that is on the table.  When he does this, it means that something Ada just did supports Shane's view of her.  Note particularly:  That can be anything:  If Ada just shot a man in cold blood to further a selfish agenda, and Shane's player decides to give her dice, that means that Shane sees that (in this particular instance) as supporting his idea that she's a moralistic fool.  Which is weird, yes, but probably good-weird.
[*]Rules Change #2:  Shane can freely roll those dice for Tasks, rather than his own.  However, he may not spend them freely from his Effort Pool.  He may only spend Ada's dice on a Goal for which Ada is named in the Stakes.  So "Get into the bank vault", no.  "Prove Ada is a traitor", yes.[/list:o]Rules Change #2 is intended to reward players who have strong opinions about others, above and beyond dominating the people those opinions apply to.  Does it seem to work for that?


Rules Change #3:  Players keep the dice they get back from other players in a separate re-roll pile.  They can use any die to make a first roll on a Task, but can only use Re-roll dice to reroll a failed task.

Rules Change #3 is intended to encourage people to have (at any one time) at least half of their dice out on the sheets of other characters, so that they can come back as reroll dice (a strategic necessity).  Does it seem to work for that?

[MikeSands]

That all sounds like it will do the trick.

One thing that isn't addressed there is "when do you actually give people dice?"

It seems like you can just do this any time, but that should be made a clear part of your change #1, I think.

Also, when do you create perceptions about other characters? Could Fred, say, get given some dice by Carla, and decide they go on a new perception about her? Or would they have to go on an existing one?

[TonyLB]

Oh, the question of when you get another person's dice is, in fact, handled in the Hybrid document.  When you win a conflict (by bidding dice on it) people trade the dice they bid.  So if I bid four twos (to get a total of eight) to beat your one six, you get four of my dice and I get one of yours.

That's a bad deal in terms of my keeping my dice on my own sheet, but since keeping my dice is a questionable proposition to start with, maybe I do it intentionally.  Who knows?  The strategy gets deep, quickly.


When do you create perceptions about other characters?  Darn good question, which may in turn have impact on the Character Development thread.  Or, rather, it's clearly Character Development, but I'll handle it here unless things get very involved, at which point I'll export it back over.

I think that you could have people declare "Create a Perception about Character X" as a Goal.  If someone other than X wins the Goal then they get to create a new Perception, whatever they like.  If X wins it then they remain a mystery.  This one's great for "Okay, this is a test, I'll judge you based on what you do".

I also think that you could have people declare "Create Perception X about some character" as a Goal.  Whoever wins the Goal gets the perception, and may narrate who they think it applies to.  This one's great for "One of us is a murderer... but who?".

Do I want to enshrine both into the rules mechanics?  I don't know.  They both have their appeal.

But no, I definitely wouldn't let people just create a perception in order to hold dice.  If they can't hold the dice coming their way then said dice go back to their point of origin (which will often, but not always, be their owner).

[Doug Ruff]

But no, I definitely wouldn't let people just create a perception in order to hold dice.  If they can't hold the dice coming their way then said dice go back to their point of origin (which will often, but not always, be their owner).

Why not? I'm sure you have a good reason, it's just that this would solve the issue of when to creat a Perception about someone. It gets created as a result of interacting (and conflicting with) another character. Sounds quite reaonable to me.

As for your initial post, I think that this sorta works within the context of your Hybrid rules, but I'm going to repeat myself and say that things are getting very complicated.

If you're OK with this, I'd like to try and come up with a refocused rules version which concentrates on the 'sharing dice level' more, and redcuces the complexity of the Hybrid resolution.

But, for the current version, some more things to consider.

(1) Why re-roll the dice when you use them? Knowing exactly what the pips are on the dice you are holding against someone strikes me as being more tactiacally useful - which also better represents the "dirt" you hold on them.

(2) I think that Shane should only be able to use the Ada's dice against her. This would either be to add to his side for a Goal that works against her ("Prove Ada is a Traitor") or to undermine Ada's side in a conflict (either by re-rolling her dice, or adding the dice to the opposition. Remember that if the opposition wins, Ada gets the dice back anyway.)

(3) There should be a way of trading off dice so that you can get your own dice back without having them rolled against you.

What if you could trade a dice you hold against another player for any die held by another player against you, as long as the value of the die you traded was less than or equal to the value of the die you took back.

Also, what if you could trade for dice held against other players in this way.

Finally, what if you could set the Stakes for a Goal such that the winner got to steal re-roll dice off the loser, of any colour? I'd like to see that.

[TonyLB]

[friendly jibe]Hey, Doug, you don't want a less complex system.  You want to get rid of my complexities to make room for yours![/friendly jibe]

On creating Perceptions to hold dice:  Doesn't that sort of short-circuit the Character Development issue of having the value of these Perceptions rise over time?  If you get eight dice, and decide to put them all in a "Ada:  Lesbian" Perception, that's really not the same as having worked to establish the Perception in the first place, then worked seven successive times to raise it.

I strongly suspect that I'm not getting quite what you're saying on this.  Can you perhaps offer an example?


(1) No real reason.  If you've got a good reason for keeping the value of the dice, go for it.  I'm not quite getting how you'd think of it, yet.

(2) I think that Shane should totally be able to use Ada's dice on his "Ada:  Weakling" Perception against Michael in a "Convince Shane that Ada can handle this mission alone" Goal.  You?

(3) Why?  Doesn't that sort of undermine the importance of whether or not you act in accord with someone's expectations?

I do, however, think that when Player A succeeds in reducing the value of one of Player B's perceptions, so that they can no longer hold all of the dice they could a moment ago, they should get the excess as a reward.

[Doug Ruff]

[friendly response]Ouch, you got me there![/friendly response]

On creating Perceptions to hold dice: Doesn't that sort of short-circuit the Character Development issue of having the value of these Perceptions rise over time? If you get eight dice, and decide to put them all in a "Ada: Lesbian" Perception, that's really not the same as having worked to establish the Perception in the first place, then worked seven successive times to raise it.

That's a good point, but I think I need to have a really good sit down and re-read of the system. In all seriousness, because it's complex and it's yours, it's much harder for me to keep up with you. I suspect that offering to post my own stuff is my way of trying to get round having to do all this work, but that's not very helpful of me.

As for the other stuff:

(1) Keeping the value of the dice allows you to make a tactical decision to stuff up the other player at the worst possible moment. For example, what if Ada has a stack of '6's and one of the dice you hold is also a '6'? If you can get your '6' down first, you've blocked her out of the contest. Or you can add the die to anothe side which already has a '6' on the table.

It encourages players more to use the dice they hold against other people to deliberately screw them over in a calculated fashion. I think that's a good thing.

This undermines their use as a re-roll mechanic, but you currently have a separate mechanic (Momentum) for re-rolls, so I don't think that's all bad.

(2) Yes, absolutely. I also think that if Shane wins that showdown, that Michael's player should get the dice (because this is an exchange of information about Ada.) You?

(3) Two reasons for wanting this. First, it's a partial defense against someone holding a large number of your dice on a perception and not using them. It may be possible to choke a sngle player out of the game with this tactic, I'm not sure.

Second, I love the idea of people passing these dice arond the table, spreading rumours and dirt about each other and generally horse-tradig for favours. It adds to an atmosphere whn you never quite know who's talking about who behind who's back, or who you are going to end up owing a favour to. In ther words, it engenders exactly the sort of complex, underhanded, incestuous relationships that I think make this game fun.

[TonyLB]

(1)  That's a good point.  I'm going to have to think about that, and maybe do some solo-playtest.  Maybe you can use them against the person they belong to, or roll them against someone else for Stakes about that person.  So you'd be encouraged to use the high dice, and roll the low dice.

(2) I agree that Michael should get the dice.  I think the idea that you trade dice bid on a goal would handle that, but I might need to make the wording a bit more explicit.  Basically, whatever dice Shane bids on the goal, Michael's going to get.  So if he bids his own dice, Michael gets some insight into him.  If he bids Ada's dice, Michael gets some insight into Ada.

(3) Oh... that's a really solid point.  You do need some way to stop people from gumming up the works by just choking dice straight out of the system.

I'm still not thrilled about the prospect of Ada being able to steal Ada's dice back from Shane.  As I said, I think that undercuts some of the dynamic.  But if there is a mechanism for Michael to steal Ada's dice from Shane, that would actually be really cool.  It gets into dollar-auction territory, because Shane would be able to roll those dice and try to use them against Michael... which doesn't cost him anything, since if he doesn't spend them he'll probably lose them anyway, and by winning he would gain something else.

Okay, yeah, you've sold me on this.  I'm thinking, and hopefully I'll have a proposed rule soon.

[TonyLB]

Okay, I have a really strange reworking of this.

Let's propose that one of the players has this... special role.  They're playing their own character or characters, like normal, but they're also given extra powers and responsibility over maintaining the level of general antipathy of the universe.  We could call them... I don't know... "Game Master", or something.

We do the following to the rules:[list=1][*]As per Doug's point #1, above, a player with a die not-their-own may place it into their Effort pool at any time, value unchanged.  This indicates that the other character has done something to play into that perception of their behavior.
[*]For logistics purposes, I'd say that a player should roll all their not-their-own dice the first time a conflict naming that character crops up in a scene.  That way they only need to keep from knocking them with elbows for one scene, and don't need to write down the value of every single die when they end a session.  But it keeps the strategic-screw value high (and randomly variable) particularly for large pools of said dice.
[*]Placing a die, or dice, into your Effort pool also earns you an automatic task-success (letting you bid and create/resolve conflicts).
[*]When a player puts one of your dice into their effort pool, you get the right to either (a) reroll any die in any effort pool or (b) take one of the dice from your effort pool back.
[*]These both give players the chance to keep their own pools small and tightly linked (i.e. 3 3s, rather than a 1, 3, 3, 5 and 6), and to unlink the pools of others.  Why does this matter?  Because....
[*]At the end of a scene, the GM gets all unspent dice in everyone's Effort Pools.  So every die that you roll into your Effort pool will be going to someone, either traded away when bid on a conflict, or off to the GM if not.
[*]The GM becomes the one in charge of changing the Task Numbers.  Characters have traits (like "Shoot people in cold blood: 5" or "Double Agent: 1").  The player chooses, for any task, which Trait is relevant.  The base Task Number is equal to that trait.  They then describe what they're doing.  The GM may choose to give them back one of their dice in order to shift the Task Number one point up or down.  He may do this multiple times.  Doing this recognizes that the description of the task is substantially easier or harder than it would normally be for that character (e.g. "I spin through the air, land on the pastry cart, go scooting across the room and gun down the mooks in cold blood while lying on my back in crushed eclairs"... "Oh, even you don't get that at an ease of 5... have three dice back, and roll it at 2.")
[*]Players may take rerolls at will on any failed roll (without referring to traits).  After all, the more dice they roll the more dice they'll lose.[/list:o]Here are the type of scenes that I think would evolve from this rules mechanism:

[*]Classic "get things done" scenes with players pitted against GM adversity and each other:  These would have lots of task rolls, and relatively few Perceptions rolled.  The GM would invest dice from the challenge pool, in order to push players to roll yet more dice overcoming failures.  Players could avoid a net GM victory by playing to the perceptions of other players, giving them a chance to be effective with fewer dice.
[*]Talking-heavy scenes between players:  These would serve to get dice out of your pool, and into the pools of other players.  After all, the only way to effectively get dice back from the GM during action scenes (above) is to have dice already "racked up" in the perception pools of other players.  Note that, using the Perception rules above, these could be executed entirely without Task resolution, running only on the Conflict Rules.[/list:u]I think that this would encourage people to seek out now the type of scene they need in order to balance their resources for the type of scenes they expect upcoming.  And hopefully that would mean an intuitively "right" balance of scenes without resorting to explicit rules defining them.  Yes, I'm taking my own advice from another thread.

Do you think it would actually work that way?  Will this balance the group desire to "beat the GM" against the personal desire to "beat the other player"?  Moreover, do you think it could in fact (horrors!) inspire teamwork, with Player A adding a strategic die off of a Perception about Character B, Player B rolling a die as a side effect, abd both of them using those new resources to beat down on the opposition?