Yggdrasil moves one more time

[Christoffer Lernö]

Thinking about Ygg improvisation again...

The basic in Yggdrasil is that the attack roll gives you the extent of improvisation. How much the opponent is at your mercy depends on how well you roll. In my latest draft I had 5 levels of margin:

0-2 Minimal
3-4 Good
5-6 Excellent
7-8 Awesome
9+ Fantastic[/list:u]
To put these numbers in perspective you have 25% chance to get Good or more if you are of equal skill. Excellent is 1 in 12 and Awesome and Fantastic is impossible to reach with a normal attack (but can be achieved with

Inspirational attacks as by "gambling margin")

The player then narrates what actually happens. Failure and success are both narrated by the player who is limited by the margin in what can be narrated.

Anyway, when you hit someone for damage you roll an injury roll which is rolling Damage # of dice vs. Toughness+Armour.

For explanation of this, see the old quickstart rules and the discussion of those here

I initially sought to find a way to determine chance of grabbing/pinning/throwing and such moves but I'm thinking of throwing that out of the window.

The only really interesting (=difficult to handle reasonably) situation comes when Little Joe with Strength 2 wants to pin Big Bugger with Strength 7. Shouldn't there be a difference? I initially thought of a quality roll just like the damage roll. Maybe Joe rolls 2 dice vs Bugger's strength of 7 or something. But it's very clumbsy since the injury roll mechanism isn't symmetric (although it works great for damage). It's not very elegant to try to fit that roll to do stat vs. stat.

My best idea here is this: Basically you need more margin if the opponent is stronger.

So let's say "pin" has a basic difficulty of needing a "Good" margin. Then for Joe who is differing by 5 points he might need an Awesome (+2 groups) margin to pin Bugger. In the opposite case Bugger needs simply a "Good" margin, because that is the minimum.

Anyway, this method avoids clogging up play with unnecessary rolls. A nice side effect is that Joe easily can narrate moves that fit with the requirements. For example if Joe gets an "Excellent" result (which isn't enough to pin Bugger), Joe's player can narrate Joe trying to pin down Bugger but Bugger pulling himself free and Joe then instead hits Bugger in the balls instead (aimed hits like that would be no problem with an "excellent" margin). Maybe having some favourable circumstance might help (or make it harder) to pin the opponent. All those can be worked into the margin needed (which I assume is worked out by the GM by estimation rather than calculation, using simple examples)

What I'm doing here is reducing stat differences to a higher margin requirement. However, this doesn't reduce Joe's chances to actually HIT Bugger, just reduces his chances to do a particular kind of move. To me this sounds like results would turn out fairly plausible. Am I missing something?

Quick Summary again: I roll and then I see what I can do with what I rolled. If my opponent is very strong or has other advantages there might be certain moves that need a higher roll than usual to be allowed. I decide a move and then narrate what happens within the limits of what is allowed by the roll.
The underlined part is "the new stuff" I'm thinking of adding.

[Christoffer Lernö]

Maybe I should clarify that it is important for me to keep handling time low. The whole system is based around Fortune-in-the-Middle, with an emphasis on allowing player to construct colour in a way to heavily contribute to a scene.

Ideally I envision a game where fight efficiency is entirely separated from colour. All the while making it on the surface look like a rpg in the traditional vein (BRP/AD&D style). I believe it's not possible to create such a system, because the requirements are contradictory. What I do believe is possible is to get close enough to satisfy these requirements in a practical situation (e.g. fight efficiency depends on colour, but in most cases it will not be very dependent on it).

I recommend taking a look at the pdf to get things more in context though.

[Christoffer Lernö]

Sorry to bump this message one more time, just want to ask one more time to make sure no-one missed it who might have comments.

The question is: Does anyone see any potential problems with this scheme I propose?

Basically I go fortune-in-the-middle roll determined by the skills of the combatants. Narration rights then go to the controller of the attacking character. Narration rights are limited by the margin of the success. Moves that are considered less likely to happen (like an weak old lady throwing a sumo wrestler) due to differences in stats or situation are simply represented by requiring better result margin for them to be allowed to be narrated.

So as an example: instead of rolling a to-hit and then roll "is my guy strong enough" to take both strength and skill into account in a throw, lower strength of the attacker simply translates to a higher requirement in terms of margin for the throw in comparison with say a simple punch.

And a play example:

Biff wants to attack Grugg. Rolling and taking into account their relative skills Biff gets a margin of 4 (just an arbitrary number for this example).

With a margin of 4 Biff might be allowed to make a damaging armbar, pinning Grugg and rolling damage.

However, Grugg is much stronger than Biff which increases the margin requirement to 6 for the damaging armbar.

That means the margin of 4 isn't enough for Biff to make the damaging armbar against Grugg (even though it would have been enough if he would have been fighting against someone as strong as himself). Instead Biff's player has to narrate some other move.

A punch isn't affected by differences in strength so maybe Biff's player could narrate some cool margin 4 haymaker attack.

Another possibility is that Biff decides on doing a simple non-damaging armbar which only would cost a margin of 2. However, because Grugg is stronger the requirement is upped to 4.[/list:u]

[Shreyas Sampat]

I don't really have a solution to this, but here are some thoughts:

You are attempting an Impossible Thing: separating narration from effectiveness while still limiting narration by efffectiveness.  Eek.

That said, I think this can be done, but it would be a big high-handling-time headache.

Posibly, you could categorize the various actions into groups - aikido throws, trips, and footsweeps could be in the "moving your opponent around" group; feints, stopcuts, and weird compound attacks could be in the 'fancy bladework' category, etc; these are ranked in a fixed "difficulty hierarchy" and this is shifted up or down by stat differences.  You declare a category and then your margin sets the "coolest" move you can narrate out of that category.

[Kester Pelagius]

Greetings Pale Fire,

And a play example:

Biff wants to attack Grugg. Rolling and taking into account their relative skills Biff gets a margin of 4 (just an arbitrary number for this example).

With a margin of 4 Biff might be allowed to make a damaging armbar, pinning Grugg and rolling damage.

However, Grugg is much stronger than Biff which increases the margin requirement to 6 for the damaging armbar.

That means the margin of 4 isn't enough for Biff to make the damaging armbar against Grugg (even though it would have been enough if he would have been fighting against someone as strong as himself). Instead Biff's player has to narrate some other move.

A punch isn't affected by differences in strength so maybe Biff's player could narrate some cool margin 4 haymaker attack.

Another possibility is that Biff decides on doing a simple non-damaging armbar which only would cost a margin of 2. However, because Grugg is stronger the requirement is upped to 4.[/list:u]

Well, going by your example, which sounds roughly similar to something I've been toying with but not really implemented I'll just throw caution to the wind and offer my rusty two cents.

My idea was to have the resolutions rolls rolled as base score vs. base score with a 'degree of success' determined by the difference in the score with 'bonuses' and 'modifiers' either A) being left as optional to the player whether to appy or B) not directly affecting the initial level of success or failure but rather modifying, slightly, the outcome.

Thus, instead of Biff discovering he can't touch Grugg, Biff may discover that Grugg *also* did him for damage; if you follow?

I have been trying to think of ways to make actions simultaneous without relying on action phases and that's one of the things I thought might do it.  IE: Use the modifiers/bonuses to simulate counter moves/actions that occur at the same time.  Or something.

Apologies for not having a real rules sample to post.  Did that help any?


Kind Regards,

Kester Pelagius

[Mike Holmes]

You are attempting an Impossible Thing: separating narration from effectiveness while still limiting narration by efffectiveness.  Eek.

Amen.

Mike

[Christoffer Lernö]

You are attempting an Impossible Thing: separating narration from effectiveness while still limiting narration by efffectiveness.  Eek.

How do you mean? Am I really separating narration from effectiveness? For example, I can throw x to the floor if I have a result of y. I was thinking of a very loose amount of rules like:

Margin group of:
0 Just do damage
1 Damage or effect like throw etc
2 Damage+1 effect or special damage
3 Damage+2 effects or special damage+1 effect

If I have a margin or 2, I can do anything that margin 2 or less would allow. Now if my opponent is much stronger, that would maybe make certain effects +1 group more difficult. Is it this what breaks the system?

FX of course is always free to add at no cost. What an "effect" is, and what you pay for with margin, is basically an in-system effect. For example "the opponent ends up on the floor" is an effect (being on the floor being a disadvantaged situation giving penalties when fighing). If this is a throw or sweep or shove or whatever - that does not matter... you're free to narrate the method. However, a certain type of putting the opponent on the floor "I throw him" might have a higher cost in terms of margin because that move is harder against a much bigger opponent (Bilbo Baggins trying to put some wrestling moves on the Trolls for example).

I'm thinking that these "reality checks" would simply be ruled by the GM. If the GM thinks there should be a higher margin, there's a higher margin. No other rules than that really. I need a few examples of situations certainly, but no hard and heavy pervy rules about when and where margin cost increases.

However, since I'm not 100% on what you mean Shreyas I might still be heading Impossible Lane. Am I?

P.S. Kester, what you're suggesting sounds like the idea of "concessions". I am aware of this method but right now it doesn't look like I would need to use it.

[Christoffer Lernö]

I'm gonna take some time off here and think a little more of how I can make things work.

[ADGBoss]

Allow me to throw in my impressions. I realise Combat is supposed to be very efficient but to my eyes, I am not seeing this.  Essentially, you narrarate what you want, then you stop and figure out whether or not the planets are aligned correctly (without a computer) and then narrarate the result.

Then you have the Big Bugger example, where Joe gets an Excellent but Excellent is not good enough for his intention so he improvises and does something that is allowed. That personally is the problem I have with some parts of narrative action because the player "fails" but then improvises read Retcons.

However, the Big Bugger example may be where you want to go. What if a Player just initiates combat. Period. Based on the factors they roll and get a MArgin of Success.  They can do XYZ based on the margin of success, so there is no retcon because they basically do not have a Intention declared before the roll.

"I attack Blah. I get an Excellent Success"
"Excellent."
"Is that enough to throw Blah from the ledge."
"No but you can kick him in the nuts or cut off his pinky."
"Excellent. I will sever the pinky"
"Narrarate away."

To my eyes thats a bit cleaner and easier and more Flexible.

Sean
ADGBoss

[Christoffer Lernö]

Allow me to throw in my impressions. I realise Combat is supposed to be very efficient but to my eyes, I am not seeing this.  Essentially, you narrarate what you want, then you stop and figure out whether or not the planets are aligned correctly (without a computer) and then narrarate the result.

Originally I separated things: You either declared a specific move "I pin him" or a generic one "I attack him".

If you pre-declared a specific move and you failed to get enough margin to do it you might be able to convert that failure into a normal hit, but often it would be a total miss if the margin wasn't enough.

For a generic one you'd have margin and get to narrate depending on the extent of your margin, but you needed more margin than if you had declared it before the roll.

Basically:

Declare before roll: higher chance to hit with a special move, lower chance to hit at all.
Declare after roll: lower chance to hit with a special move, higher chance to hit at all.

However, I didn't see this actually adding anything than some vague sense of realism, so I made them identical.

Joe can say "I attack" and decide afterwards totally what he wants to do, or detail a special move and back-pedal it into something else if he fails to get enough margin. Less rules (more fun?) that way too.

Basically it's about deciding what it means when Joe's player says "I pin him". Is it stating intent, execution or what? I changed it into always being intent, nothing more. So there is no real retcon happening.
Intent does not equal initiation of action.

Joe might want to pin Big Bugger but discovers it's probably a bad idea and does something else. All of this is represented by the die roll.

So I think we're really talking about the same thing. I just allow the players to state an intent, although this intent doesn't really mean anything.