basic system questions (or, d6+marker pen=?)

[Edgar]

Hello,

I've been working on homemade game systems for quite a while now, but the newest brainchild is giving me a bit of a headache. So, avoiding any lengthy introduction, the basic ideas are:

1. the system has things rated in 4 steps: marginal, ordinary, good, amazing
2. dice are rolled for task resolution
3. I have a ton of d6s and a marker pen
4. yes, I'm afraid it's a dice pool system, with the average PC having around 4-7 dice for a task.

option 1.

have the sides of the d6 marked as following
3 sides are marked "O" , which yields a success if the task was of ordinary difficulty
2 sides are marked "G", for good difficulty
1 side is marked "A", for amazing difficulty

so, Bob the Barbarian has a 6 dice pool for wilderness survival. It's an Ordinary task to survive in plains or friendly forest,  a Good difficulty for mountains, and Amazing for ice desert. You get the idea.

all is good and well so far. However, the PCs are going to use tools and motivations as well. so then I thought about it further, decided that I wanted to take a route different than (sword=+1 die) and...

Option 2:
1 side is marged with a star. this is always a success
1 side is marked "G". This is a success if it is a good difficulty task
2 sides are marked "O". this is a success if it is an ordinary task
1 side is marked "M". this is a success if the player is willing to "burn" a Motivation for the PC
1 side is marked "E". as before, but for equipment.

A "burnt" motivation or equipment cant be "burned" again for the current conflict. (Exhaustion, expended spell, used threat, leaving the sword stuck between the dragon's ribs)

Let's say Bob the Barbarian is in the Ice Wastes of Midnight. He has a freezing week ahead, and it is Amazingly dificult to survive the experience. So he rolls his dice but no successes come up - but one die comes up "M" and one "E". If he burns off an appropriate motivation, for example "Protect daughter" (he's following soldiers from Doomdark who kidnapped his daughter), he gets to survive. Or perhaps he has a survival kit.

Later, Bob is arguing with Utarg's chamberlain. Being an uncouth fellow, Bob has only 2 dice for the attempt, and both come up "E". If he knew a secret about the chamberlain, he could use it to claim the 2 successes.

I imagine players being able to buy motivations for EXP in the middle of the fight- however, buying the motivation off would also cost EXP. This is an obvious plot machine for the GM.

My questions are:

1. Do you like option 1 or 2 and why?
2. has it been done before?
3. Is it just too silly/complicated to work?
4. equipment and motivation come up 1 in 6 chances each. would you change that?
5. Is there an obvious pitfall designing a system around that?

Thanks for your comments.

[matthijs]

1. I definitely prefer option 2, because it gives the players more choices. The choice "sacrifice X to achieve Y" is pretty cool in most games. (It's used in the Itras By resolution cards, for example).
2. I don't know... probably? In one form or another?
3. Not at all! It sounds very straightforward to me. And fun, I'd like to play this, I think.
4. You'll need playtesting to find out. But just having this question in mind will help focus playtesting, so you're definitely on the right track.
5. Make sure that the use of motivations + equipment are clearly defined. Exactly what does it mean to "burn" a piece of equipment? Can all equipment be burned?

[Edgar]

"burn" (working on a better name) means the equipment (or rather tool as it can be a spell or knowledge) or motivation is "used up" for the current conflict.

It can be used again in the next conflict, if it is still intact. I want to give each motivation or equipment piece a unique value rather than just having a "+1 sword". Do you want to risk the family heirloom magical sword breaking as you slash hard at the dragon? There has to be a risk involved to make things interesting, right?

Is this way of handling it too limited to be interesting?

[Edgar]

Forgot to add - things of great significance to the PC would have less chance of being "lost". How does that sound?

[matthijs]

I think Fastlane uses similar "burn" mechanics - check it out, it's an interesting game.

Depending on what you want to do with the game, you could actually require players to roll for exactly what piece of equipment got "burned". Added risk can be added fun. But it might be hard to make it make logical or dramatical sense...

[Falc]

My first thought about this is, perhaps it's not such a good idea to separate the 'burning' of Equipment and Motivations. Your system does not seem to go into much detail (only 3 difficulty levels), so maybe you're better off merging these.

This is also a bit related to my following thought: if you're willing to pay the price ('burn'), you've got 50% chance of getting an 'Amazing' success. Perhaps suitably heroic, but you'd need to tell a bit more about the setting and feel of the game to know whether that's appropriate.

Also, a question for clarification: in your "Bob is arguing with Utarg's chamberlain" example, you mention multiple successes. What role exactly do these play? Is it possible to fail if you don't get enough successes, or do you only need one, with additional goodies added if you get more. Also, you mentioned getting two 'burn' results. Can you clarify whether you'd need to 'burn' one item to get both successes, or do you need one 'burn' per success?

[Edgar]

the system is fairly generic for now, but the setting I'm aiming it at is fairly heroic/cinematic and leaning somewhere towards a gamist-narrativist game type. (and I sem to drift towards The Pool and Sorcerer style mechanics, le sigh). PCs start out and stay more powerful than the average inhabitant of the game world. They follow their goals, and when they do come in conflict, the ordinary world is just a backdrop for titanic inner and outer struggle. I want the dice mechanics to make players think about preparation (Equipment) and shifting Motivations their characters have.

in short, I want the PCs to try over-the-top things.  The GM sets the difficulty for any task, The player then states which difficulty he is roling for, and so on.. e.g. plain old combat between matched opponents is usually just Ordinary. Combat on rooftop at night is at least a Good feat. combat on a rooftop while outnumbered and doing fancy swashbuckling moves is Amazing. However, this is flexible as well, and can be adjusted as needed by the setting. Choosing to roll for a higher difficulty than is needed would have added benefits.

Ideally, the culmination of a scene would call for Amazingly difficult actions and would need motivations or equipment to be "burnt"- but it doesn't have to be.

The number of successes counts as well. If an antagonist has 2 Amazing successes vs. the PC's 1, he wins the contest turn.

Successes over the minimum needed could be "cashed in" right away (damage to an opponent, money from trading, repairing something outright) or kept as extra dice for the next relevant roll. Or perhaps this is not necessary and too complicated here?

Some actions might have a set difficulty, and that's where the three categories come in handy. An Ordinary quality lock needs one Ordinary success to pick. Finding a needle in a haystack might need several Amazing successes (unless the PC has a magnet). Since it is a dice pool system, having both the appropriate skill and tools means one can use all the dice in the pool. Lacking either skill or tools halves the number of dice. Lacking both reduces the pool to 1/4.

Falling behind in a contest means losing dice from the dice pool, giving less and less dice to roll in future rounds. I hope this will inspire players to try amazing difficulty actions and use motivations and equipment bonuses. Ideally at some point the character will have to acquire a new motivation to succeed, or prepare equipment appropriate for a upcoming conflict.

The difference between motivation and equipment is that equipment is prepared in advance. Motivations can be gained whenever the player feels it is appropriate. But he has to pay EXP, and again pay EXP to remove the motivation.  And yes, the motivation can be added even after a roll is made and a player sees all the dice came up "M". It costs one EXP per motivation the PC already has (so the first one is free), but removing a motivation costs one exp. Equipment (secrets, weapons, spells, martial arts skills, spaceships) needs to be acquired in-game, and has no exp cost.

Perhaps I should merge the difficulty levels instead, and go with a flat 1 or 2 in 6 chance of success, with 1 or 2 in 6 for motivation and equipment as well? (wow, I've recreated The Pool, yay)

In the "Chamberlain vs. Bob" example, cashing in ("burning") a motivation gives one success (of the quality declared before rolling the dice) per appropriate die. You only need to "burn" one item and one motivation to get all the "M" and "E"s of a roll.

So yes, burning Equipment and Motivation to have 50% of the dice yield an amazing success is right. But, what goal is important enough that the player decides to exhaust his PC like that, and risk loss of Equipment?

As for attributes, I imagine them organized in a very simplistic way - as of the latest brainstorm, there are 6 attributes/talents (fight, move, notice, stealth, know and resolve). additionally a character has a skill descriptor (soldier, mage, sailor, pilot). Now, attempting an action where the skill applies fully (e.g. brawl- soldier+fight) results in the full dice pool being rolled. The skill areas are very bras - fight applies to arguing, stealth applies to subterfuge, etc. So there might be a courtier with Fight pool of 10 dice, who is prctically unbeatable in arguments but can use only 5 of those dice for physical combat.