Delta - Ch. 1, Foundations - Comments Please!

[iago]

This is the bulk of the first chapter I have written up for Delta, that follows the Introduction.  I've mentioned Delta in a few prior posts.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5452
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5622

Its main objective is to get a vocabulary established, and to talk about the basics of the die mechanic the game uses.  I'd appreciate comments on whether or not there is clarity here, what needs cleaning or tightening, etc.  

I also have my standard questions from the introduction topic (Does it generate interest in the rest of the text?  Based on the material seen thus far, what would it take for this to be a game you'd be willing to spend, say, $5 or $6 on?), if you are moved to comment upon them.

FOUNDATIONS FOR PLAY

Glossary of Terms

Ability: A special power or trick a character is able to use, often due to the strength of his chosen beliefs.  Abilities are a subset of talents (see below).

Alignment: An indication of a character's behavior, showing how closely that character is to a given stance (see below), running the range from Black to White.

Attribute: A core, intrinsic aspect of a character.  Put together, a set of attributes describes the whole range of basic capabilities any character can have.

Die: One of the three-colored dice used throughout Delta, with one third of its faces colored white, one third black, and one third green.  Often simply abbreviated as "d", preceded by a number indicating the number of dice to be used, e.g., 4d means four dice.  This is discussed in greater detail later in this chapter.

Drifting: When a character's alignment does not match their stance, they are said to be drifting.

Ethos Statement: An at-a-glance description of the overarching perspective held by a stance.

Exchange: A unit of storytelling time in which a set of actions, usually between adversaries, is described, attempted by way of common test, and played out.

Pool: In general, a pool is a set of dice, either to be rolled, or which have already been rolled. Some pools of dice are personal (controlled only by the player from whence they originated), and others are common (available to all players).

Resource: Physical or intangible, external elements which a character can draw on to get an extra "edge" during play.

Scene: A unit of storytelling time in which a sequence of exchanges or tests may play out, usually occurring in a single location.

Session: A single length of time your group gets together to play the game.  During a session, many scenes may play out, often comprising a single story or segment in a longer multi-session "arc".

Setbacks: Penalties which are applied to attributes, lasting either for the scene, or for the session or longer, representing some manner of "wound", be it physical, spiritual, mental, or social.

Stance: Stance shows what a character's core beliefs are and what that character aspires to emulate.  Stance is compared with alignment (see above) to determine how closely a character's behavior matches his beliefs.  It comes in three symbolic colors: White, Black, and Green.

Taint: In the most abstract, taint is the stain of choices and behaviors a character has made.  In the game, as a particular kind of taint accumulates, a character's alignment will change.

Talent: A skill or ability held by a character, combined with an attribute to produce the character's pool of dice for a given test.

Tenet: A description of an action or actions appropriate to a stance, used as a guideline to determine whether or not a behavior is in line with that stance's beliefs.

Test: A roll of the dice which may involve one or more characters.


The Three-Color Die

To resolve tests and conflicts in Delta, a number of dice are rolled, with each die having an equal number of white, green, and black sides. In a perfect world, six-sided dice would be readily available with this distribution, but this is not the best of all possible worlds. If you are particularly dedicated, you can create 20 or so of these with the help of an educational supplies store and some paints or appropriate markers.

My own preference is to use "fudge dice" (or "dF"s) which are available through Grey Ghost Games (www.fudgerpg.com). Fudge dice are six-sided, and have two plus, two blank, and two minus sides. It's easy to map these to colors and the signs translate fairly easily to Delta's three-colored concept.  

Failing the possession of Fudge dice, you'll have to fake it — doable, thankfully, through the use of any die type that has a number of faces that are a multiple of three.

Various Dice Methods
   dF   d3   d6   d12   d30
White   +   3   5-6   9-12   21-30
Green   0   2   3-4   5-8   11-20
Black   -   1   1-2   1-4   1-10

In general, you shouldn't choose a particular die type unless you have about 20 or so of them available in a common supply (you can buy Fudge dice in blocks of 20), or each player has about 6-10 of their own.


Rolling and Counting

Rolling dice is covered extensively in Chapter 4, but here's the quick version.  Make sure you've read the glossary, above, since a number of those terms are used here.

To determine the number of dice to roll, first pick the attribute and talent that most apply for the test at hand.  Add their numbers together, and you have the number of dice to roll.  After you've rolled the dice, you can pick one or more of those dice and put them in your success pool.  Each die you take into your pool is counted as a success for that test.

However, each die you take into your success pool that doesn't match the color of your stance costs you, in the form of taint.  These off-stance successes represent elements of your actions which go against your beliefs — if you can describe those elements, you can use those dice.


Simple Die Roll Example

A White stance character rolls four dice, resulting in 2 White, 1 Green, and 1 Black result.  He may take the 2 White dice into his success pool at no cost of taint, yielding 2 successes.  If he needed 3 or 4 successes on the roll, he would either have to choose to fail, or do something that fit the Green or Black stances' beliefs rather than his native White.

[Mike Holmes]

Looks good to me. Alignment is, of course, a potentially misunderstood term, but I think you're mechanical handling of it, the fact that it's the focus of the game, will prevent people from mishadlijg it once they're in play.

Good start.

Mike