Raw mechanic idea

[Valamir]

Ok, I've got a couple RPG ideas storming around and have been searching for a good mechanic.  I'm a sucker for original clever mechanics so I didn't just want something "standard".

I'm not sure this will wind up working for what I wanted, but it seemed so cool to me that I wanted to share it.

Characters have ability scores (higher is better), Skill levels (lower is better), and a meta game score representing "heroic level" of some sort...in my western game I called this "grit" and it was that which seperates Clint and Duke from average joe townfolk.  

Each die roll will be read two different ways.  One the "primary effect", the other the "secondary effect".  The primary effect is the traditional "degree of success" interpretation.  The secondary effect is some other quality of the attempt that would 1) be useful to measure, and 2) act contrary to the primary effect (i.e. there is a trade-off between one and the other)

Example:  the most obvious secondary effect would be the time it takes to accomplish the task.  The Primary would be how well it was accomplished.  The tradeoff would be taking more time yields better success, rushing yields lower success.


Heres how it works:

1) roll a number of d6 equal to the relevant attribute.  After viewing the roll you can reroll a number of dice equal to the metagame attribute.

2) Select  1 of the dice rolled, the rest are ignored.  You can choose any die you want based on whether you want to emphasize the primary effect or the secondary effect or strike a balance.

3) Read the primary effect by comparing the number on the die to the skill level.  If the number is equal to the skill level you've scored a standard success.  If it is greater than you score a greater success (per point different) if it is less than you score lesser success (per point different).

4) Read the secondary effect by taking the raw number rolled with lower numbers being better.  If using the default secondary of effect of time the number would be the number of seconds / minutes / hours / days the task required to accomplish depending on the time scale of the task.  Alternatively a roll of 3 is considered "standard" time or other effect.

So lets say I'm in a shootout and am rolling 3 dice with a skill of 4.  I roll a 2, 4, and 6 I have the following choices.

Choose the 4.  I get a standard success but my draw is rather slow.
Choose the 6.  I get a superior success (choose hit location, extra damage, whatever) but my draw is really slow.  Probably described as being careful and deliberate.
Choose the 2.  My draw speed is pretty fast (only if the other guy chose a 1 or 2 will he beat me) but I have an inferior success (not likely to put him down completely).

As one would expect, the more skilled you are (the lower your skill number) the easier it is to get a good result in both types of effect.  If I had a skill of 2 above, I could pick the 2 and get a standard success with it.

5) Matched dice.  If you roll doubles (or more) you can count the number rolled as the secondary effect number as normal, but get a +1 to the number for each matching die for purposes of calculating the Primary effect.

In the above example, if I'd rolled triple twos, I could select the 2 for good speed, but treat it as a 4 (2 plus 2 matches) for the Primary effect, which would give me a standard success.  Thus, with the right roll I can be good AND fast.


I REALLY loved the way this worked, on many different levels.  I like the way it empowers the player to choose their poison, much in the same way as Otherkind.  I like the way it has a built in trade off factor which could be useful in so many different ways (Primary effect is your attack score, secondary effect is your defense score...).  I like the fact that there is an easy way through the meta game rerolls to represent heroic level characters without having to give them huge stats across the board.

What I'm not sure it does well is how it handles more mundane checks, or checks for which there isn't an obvious secondary effect.  One can stretch the secondary effect to cover a bunch of things, but sometimes it feels like a stretch to come up with both a primary and secondary effect.

Some "good" uses I've thought of.

anything involving trying to succeed quickly.

Jumping a "chasm" where primary is whether you jumped far enough and secondary is whether you suffered ill effects on landing.

Moving silently where the secondary effect is how quiet you are, and the primary effect is how far you were actually able to move

Climbing, where the primary effect is how far you climb in a single turn, and the secondary effect is your risk of falling (perhaps a penalty to the next round's roll)

Playing Poker (a common example for a western themed game).  All participants make a roll.  The Secondary effect is the amount of money you contibuted to the pot (multiplied by the size of the stake) over the course of the evening.  The Primary effect is how much of that pot you won.  A standard success is 1 share, plus an additional share for each additional degree of success.   So you might choose a big number hoping to win, but if there are enough other winners to share the pot with you might still come out behind.  If the rolls are secret...you actually get a little psychological game going to.


Any way,  I've seen some problems with it but wanted to get some feed back.  Any problems you folks see with it...places where it breaks...does it sound like the central conceit of choosing which effect you want to maximize would work in actual play?

[Christoffer Lernö]

That sounds like a seriously workable scheme. Not really one for skill progression though, with the few skill levels and all.

Also, relevant secondary effects might be be more that one. Look at the chasm for example. Aside from "how did I land?" other questions would be "how much of a running start did I need?" and "did I look good doing it?"

The above problems seem very minor however.

Another thing of concern might be the chance of success. Rolling 3 or 4 dice with rerolls it would seem that you could very easily go for the perfect "1" (pun intended). In a contest beween very skilled, that seems like it could be a problem.

[Valamir]

Yeah, thats one thing I'm not sure about...if the number of dice rolled/rerolled becomes too great than you will almost always pretty much be able to pick any number you want (because most of the time all the numbers will be represented).  Going with d10s or even d20s might mitigate that effect a good bit.

[Christoffer Lernö]

Yeah, thats one thing I'm not sure about...if the number of dice rolled/rerolled becomes too great than you will almost always pretty much be able to pick any number you want.

Yes. Let's assume people would like to roll a 1 most of the time (simply because that's the easiest to analyse)

At what dice number do you have a 50% or better chance of having a 1? [number of dice=(ln 2)/(ln (x/x+1)) where x is the number of sides of the dice]

D4: 3
D6: 4
D8: 6
D10: 7
D12: 8
D20: 14

So maybe it's a matter of saying "what's the max stat" and then cross indexing it. Max stat is 4? D6 is fine. Max stat is 8? go with D12 and so on.

That ought to work right?

[Valamir]

Damn, log math PF...you're already well beyond me...I made a concerted effort to forget all the log function stuff they made me learn in school :-)

But yeah...that's exactly the kind of thing I was thinking about.  I had stats on a scale of 1-6 (to match the die size), but that really is statistically what I'd want to do.  I'd probably go with d10s rather than d8s simply because no one I know has more than a couple d8s, but its nice to see the math backing up my gut feel.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ralph,

Please let us know more about the games in question - these are real game ideas, right, intended for possible publication? If not, and if it really is just a raw mechanics discussion, then let me know that too, and this thread will hop to RPG Theory.

Best,
Ron

[Christoffer Lernö]

Just a quick thought Ralph. This sounds like it could work with the werewolf game I was discussing with hardcoremoose. Can I use it? :)

[Valamir]

Ron:  Well yeah, there is a game underneath it, and it was partially thinking about the needs of that game that got me into designing this mechanic.  The purpose of this thread was really to see if there were any big holes or broken bits in the mechanic obvious to others but missed by me, before I go and try expanding it within the game, since it is kindof unusual.


PF:  Sure feel free.  Including an acknowledgement of it somewheres would be a nice touch.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ralph,

So - tell more about the game overall. What's its deal?

Best,
Ron

[Henry Fitch]

I can see a lot of cool things being done with this. The first one to really take off for me is the idea of a Reality Show RPG.

Now, here's the more detailed part, which is quite ektchy and which might end up getting split off into a different thread, but let's try anyway:

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Inspirations: Series 7, Survivor, The Game, Lord of the Flies, Idoru

Characters are contestants in a near-future reality show in which they are dropped onto a desert island and encouraged to plot against and ultimately kill each other. Possibly, they are death row inmates. Everything they do is broadcast on television.

Every action has an Ease, based on how easy it is to do well, and an Ignominy, based on how hard it is to make the audience like you for it. (those are working names.)

To succeed, you want to roll under Ease. To make it look good, you want to roll over Ignominy. The number of dice you roll and pick from is determined by.... something.

When you successfully make an action look good, or maybe only on a Critically Good Looking success that type of action becomes more popular with the audience, permanently lowering its Ignominy. There will be a shifting chart to keep track of this. A similar system could be implemented for Ease, where each character would have a chart of what's easy for them to do, that changes when they succeed..

Some kind of Experience and Fame mechanic could be added, related to a cumulative total of people's rolls. Not sure about this one.

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I'm pretty sure there's a serious problem in there somewhere...