A Small Scene Resolution Mechanic

[ODDin]

Some time ago I decided to run a fairly standard high-fantasy campaign, but I wanted to go extremely light on rules. At first, I wanted to do it absolutely free-form. However, I didn't know what to do in combat. It seems somehow unfair to say that your characters are beaten when it's free-form - you're just deciding it for them, - and yet making the characters simply win every fight is also quite stupid in many situations.
Thus, I've come up with the following mechanic for fighting: there is a number which determines the strength of the group and a number that determines the strength of the enemies (let us call it Power). Dice are rolled and added to these numbers (probably small dice, so that the Power will have more impact than the dice), and the group who gets the higher number wins. The combat will probably be separated into several rolls, so that there is a point when I say, "ok, you see that your enemies are defeating you, will you attempt to continue the fight or try to run away?" Then I can either roll for the continuation of the fight or let the characters run away (or roll Power with a big bonus to the players to see if they manage to escape).
Also, with this mechanic the players have actual mechanical incentives to buy better equipment, train to improve their combat skills and stuff like that, all the while leaving the system very light on rules.

So first of all, what do you think of this mechanic? Was it already done somewhere and I'm just reinventing the wheel?
Also, I'm not really sure as to how I actually determine the Power. I can, of course, just try to generally assess it, but I think it'd be better to something more specific.


- Michael

[monstah]

I don't know about this one in specific, but "roll, add and compare" have been pretty much covered by many systems. I like the fact you want several "stages" in a combat. One way I you could implement that is in a "tug of war" fashion, or say, "fight balance". Instead of characters having "hit points" which make them lose once they get to zero, the fight itself can have a balance meter, which starts neutral (or not), and is goes one unit towards the side of the highest roll. Once the meter gets to either extreme, the conflict ends.

As for the Power value, you'll prorably have to assess it. You could do that using many "small" powers which contribute. So for example, the groups could get 1 - 10 (or whatever) power depending on their size (participants), plus 1-5 depending on how well equipped they are, plus some bonus for terrain, knowledge or anything else that gives them an edge. Sum all these, and that's the group's power.

[Callan S.]

Hi Michael,

Just having a look at this

It seems somehow unfair to say that your characters are beaten when it's free-form - you're just deciding it for them,

I'm thinking if you want to be fair, it's not enough to just encompas combat with this roll - you as GM and the players probably care about other bigger things. Yes, combat is life and death - but often there are even bigger things than combat to decide - and to decide when the players lose these is probably not being fair either.

Take an old example of a PC who wants to rush down the dock to get to the boat on time before it leaves for the city of Zin, but to get down the dock he must fight and get past Gurnash the fighter.

Combat rules resolve whether you beat Gurnash --- but do you get to the boat in time? This is just up to the GM. But getting to Zin is far more important to the player than the fight (even if he was killed, the big question in his head is 'Do I get to Zin?'). If just declaring the fight is a bit unfair - isn't it also a bit unfair for the GM to just decide whether he gets to the boat in time?

Okay, I'm going the long way around, but to meet your goal of fairness (as I understand it), I would say the rules need to encompas what is important in your game. I suspect the important things in your game will be bigger than combat, most likely. What is important in your game - for example, whats the title of the game? Is that title named after something in the game? There, that'd be something important all right!

[BigElvis]

and to add to Callan's remark, I would say that you also need some sort of mechanical moderation or limit to how much resources the GM can throw at the players.

If not it can easily be a lot of GM-fiating anyway.

[ODDin]

Callan S - you're correct, it's not only about combat, it's about what is important to the game.
For that matter, I'm not intending to use this system for each combat scene either. If the characters are sent to a quest into a forest which they are normally supposed to complete and a monster that cannot be reasoned with comes out and attacks, I'll just describe the players winning the fight. Maybe they get wounded, maybe some sword is get broken, maybe one of them even dies, but on the general, the group wins. I'm only intending to roll when the group gets itself into combat it could've avoided or when both winning and losing are intersting for the characters and the storyline.
However, seeing your example, I believe I should expand the idea to other important areas of the game. However, since only things with a physical element (fighting, chasing, disarming traps) require a roll, it's gonna be pretty much the same Power roll, only with different things taken into account (how fast can the group run, for instance). I want important conversations and discussions to be done without any rolls - I'll just see what the characters are saying and doing and judge how the NPCs react.

BigElvis - I'm not really sure what you mean by resources here. Could you elaborate?

[BigElvis]

Ok.What I mean is that when you have unlimited resources you can control the story.

In your game it seems to me that the GM has a tangible resource which is Power, and a not so tangible resource which is control of narration.

The players playing the PCs only have a pretty weak 'impressing the GM with my social skills or roleplaying or whatever' resource which is very intangible and completely up to the GMs discretion if he wants to give any value.

This gives the GM total control of the action and he really only has to worry about keeping the players happy enough with the action so they don't leave the game.

You may think it is not a problem and that the GM just has to be a good GM. I don't think that is a very valid argument, as I would say the game rules' distribution of resources and not the GM has to be good.

[ODDin]

Well, it is more or less a fact that the stricter and more specific the rules are, the more power and control the players have over the game. As I've said, I began with wanting to run the campaign practically free-form - in which the GM is abslutely omnipotent and the players have no control over anything whatsoever. So while I did add this nifty little mechanic, it doesn't mean I'm going to use a very complicated set of rules.
The players can control their Power in pretty straightforward manners - if the fighter goes to a shop and buys a new magical sword, the group's power will increase. Granted, I am the one to judge by how much, and I'm not telling the players by how much it increased, but it definitely did increase. Same goes for the wizard spending a week at the academy studying new spells or anything like that. I can give the players bonuses based purely on other things too, such as them inventing an ingenious way to invade the bandits' camp or spending a month in a library studying the anatomy and weak spots of a rare monster they're intending to fight and which they normally couldn't beat.
Of course, I can cheat the players and not increase their Power, but that undermines the whole point of introducing the system to begin with. I'm not there to show the players I have bigger guns.

In social situations it's less tangible, true, but I'll just attempt to roleplay the NPCs as best as I can and think, "hmm, were I the head of the bandits, and these guys told me they were going to send an army of zombies against me, would I believe them?"

So basically, the only way to make the players' resources more tangible is to hand them a table of "this sword will increase your Power by 2 and this magic amulet will increase it by 3 and studying martial arts with master Wu-Ju will increase your Power by 5", etc - which demands a lot of work creating (and presumably balancing) such a table, and besides, it undermines the quite realistic feeling where the players don't really know what their actions will do.

I'll probably create some rudimentary table of that kind, but will leave a lot of space for on-the-spot decisions - plus, I won't show this information to the players.

[Callan S.]

I think Lars/BigElvis might be getting at is there's not much point being fair in combat as you put it, if there's a bunch of other things which are part of the game where your omnipotent/unfair. That'd be what I'm refering to too. Not much point being fair about the fight on the dock if there's more to the game than fights, like getting onto the boat - and the GM just goes "Woops, yeah, you won the fight fair and square but...hmmm, no, you don't make it to the boat". Being fair in the fight isn't going to make up for being unfair in other parts of the game - particularly the more important parts.

Omnipotence lacks one power, and that's the power to be fair.

[Simon C]

The problem that I have with this mechanic is that, while it tries to introduce some "fairness" into combat situations, it's really just concealing the unfairness behind a veneer of dice rolling.  Consider that, since you decide the level of power of the PCs, and the level of power of the NPCs, and since the power is the most important deciding factor in the outcome, essentially you're just deciding the outcome of the combat, but you're giving the players the illusion that you're not.  

I think that maybe you need to work out what it is you mean by "fairness", and then find a way to introduce that to all aspects of the game, rather than just combat.  Freeform roleplaying is very successful for a lot of people, but my feeling is that those people are operating from a basis of strong trust within the group, and some strong implicit (and often unstated) rules about making "fair" decisions.  It's a very good idea to make sure that all the players are on board with the process you use for making decisions in the game.  Perhaps a good way for you to start thinking about this is to write down the process you're already using for making decisions in the game, and then going over this with the players.  Perhaps you'll find that there are some general principles that you use to govern this, like "no one gets too powerful" or "significant successes take time".  This way, the player's aren't guessing about how to influence the outcome of the game, they have clear guidelines for doing so.

For example, say a character is searching around an enemy's house, trying to find some incriminating information.  How do you decide if they find anything?  How do you decide if there is anything there to find?