[Mortal Coil] Token-based resolution system

[Brennan Taylor]

Hey, folks,

I proposed this bare-bones token system for my modern-day supernatural game (now titled Mortal Coil) last month, but now I have fleshed it out a bit. This is still a very preliminary draft, so be gentle. Take a look below, I welcome all comments.

Tokens
The new Mortal Coil system is based on tokens which can be used in play. There are several varieties, and their properties are detailed below.

Action Tokens
Each character has a pool of action tokens he can use to take actions in the game. Each time a character wishes to perform any task, he must commit an action token to do so.

Magic Tokens
All characters have a pool of magic tokens, as well. These are different than action tokens and are used in a slightly different way. Magic tokens must be spent to activate spells or magical powers.

Bonus Tokens
Characters have a third and final pool of tokens, bonus tokens. These tokens are awarded and penalized in play, and can be sacrificed to aid actions or magical effects.

Commitment
When a player declares that his character is performing an action and moves an action token forward to do so, this is called committing the token. Any physical or mental effort requires the commitment of an action token. Once a token or tokens are committed, they cannot be reused until the conflict to which they were committed is complete or aborted. Magic and bonus tokens are not committed, they are spent or sacrificed instead.

Spending
Tokens are spent if they are temporarily taken from play. Spent tokens can be regained through rest and recuperation. Specific requirements for regaining spent action and magic tokens vary.

Sacrifice
A token can be sacrificed, in which case the token is permanently removed from the pool. Bonus tokens are always sacrificed, they are essentially ephemeral. It is unusual to sacrifice a magic token, but this can happen if the character wishes to create some particularly potent magical effect. It is almost unheard of to sacrifice an action token, which usually indicates that the character performs some action that permanently injures the character's body or mind.

Fatigue
All sorts of activities, be they mental or physical, cause people to become tired. If a player commits more than half of his character's available pool of action tokens at once, the character becomes fatigued when the current conflict is complete (one of the tokens is spent). Obviously, the more actions the character wishes to perform in a conflict, the more likely he is to be fatigued.

Starting Action Pool
The number of tokens in a character's action pool is equal to the average of his stats, rounded mathematically. There are six stats on a 1-10 scale, with a score of 5 being average ability.

Starting Magic Pool
A character's magic pool begins at 1 token, but is adjusted by the following factors:
· The character is aware of or believes in the supernatural (including religious miracles): +1
· The character witnessed a supernatural event firsthand or had direct contact with a supernatural creature (even if she was unaware that the creature was supernatural at the time): +1
· The character was subject to magical attack at some time in the past (even if she was unaware of the assault): +1
· The character entered the spirit world or ate spirit food: +1
· The character is a half-breed of a human and some magical creature: +2
· The character is a were creature: +3
· The character is magically initiated (per the power of the same name): +3
· The character is undead: +3
· The character is an immortal: +5

Starting Bonus Pool
All characters begin with 1 token in their bonus pool. Additional bonus tokens must be gained through play.

Conflict
A conflict is a situation in which a character wishes to act in order to influence the outcome. Conflicts cover a great deal of territory, from climbing a wall, or winning an argument, to defeating someone in hand-to-hand combat. In order for a character to act in a conflict, he must commit an action token. It is recommended that the conflict concept not be made too granular. Each conflict can cover a lot of ground.

Committing Action Tokens
A conflict is a particular action or series of actions that requires the character's total attention. Keep in mind that a character will almost always want to have several goals in a conflict. If the character is attempting to break into a house through a window, it is tempting to spend all action tokens on the break-in. However, the player must carefully consider his goals and commit action tokens to each aspect as the conflict plays out. Even in this seemingly simple action, the character is probably doing several things at the same time: attempting to break the window latch with a prybar, trying to avoid making too much noise, and listening for any sign of detection. All of these tasks require action tokens. Once committed, tokens can't be regained until the conflict is resolved.

Aborting a Conflict
The character's goals may change during the course of a conflict, usually when something unexpected occurs (the character is attempting to break in through a window when a police officer arrives). In this case, the character will wish to abort her current conflict in order to regain her action tokens for the new conflict (in this example, dealing with or escaping from the police officer). To abort a conflict before it is complete, the character must spend an action token. She then regains her full pool of action tokens (minus any spent tokens, of course) to apply to the new conflict.

Conflict Resolution
When a character must test his abilities in order to resolve a conflict, he compares his combined skill and stat rank against the difficulty of the task. If his total is greater than the task difficulty, he succeeds. If his total is less than the task difficulty, he fails. If his total is equal to the task difficulty, he achieves qualified success. The difference between the character's skill + stat and the task difficulty determines the degree of success or failure.

-3 or more: Abject failure. The character's efforts are completely fruitless, and if any harm can come to her due to failure, it does so.
-2: Complete failure. The character does not succeed and must deal with any consequences of failure.
-1: Near success. The character fails at the task, but sees how she can succeed in another attempt (whether she has the tokens for the effort or not is a different issue).
0: Qualified success. The character succeeds, but poorly. There is something wrong with the way she has succeeded, perhaps interfering with another action, or succeeding by injuring herself, etc.
+1: Success. The character succeeds but not in any spectacular fashion. The task is done.
+2: Complete success. The character thoroughly succeeds, a bit beyond what she might have been intending to do.
+3: Spectacular success. The character nails that task beyond what might be normally expected. Additional beneficial side effects related to the success of the task may occur.

Task Difficulty
Task difficulty is determined by the stat and skill ranks (also on a 1-10 scale) of the individual opposing the character's action. Inanimate objects and other such obstacles have no skills, but the skill with which they were constructed to do their job determines their ability to resist actions.

Simple: 5
Easy: 8
Average: 10
Difficult: 13
Extremely Hard: 15

Extra Effort
If a character believes her basic ability and skill are not sufficient to succeed in a conflict, she may commit extra tokens to apply extra effort to the task. She must decide how many tokens she wishes to commit before the conflict is resolved. The character may try again once if she fails, but it is considered a new conflict and she must deal with the issues arising from her failure before she can make a second attempt.

Damage from Conflict
Some conflicts will damage a character if she fails, or her goal may be to damage another character. In these cases, degree of success or failure will determine the damage level.

Scratched (+/-1): The character must commit an action token to the injury for one conflict.
Lightly wounded: (+/-2): The character must immediately spend an action token on the injury. The token can only be regained with medical attention (first aid).
Wounded (+/-3): The character must immediately spend an action token on the injury. The token can only be regained with several days of recovery after medical attention is received.
Seriously wounded (+/-4): The character must immediately spend an action token on the injury. The token can only be regained with weeks or months of physical therapy.
Maimed (+/-5): The character must sacrifice an action token on the injury.
Killed (+/-6 or more): The character is dead. Note that immortal characters cannot be killed under ordinary circumstances. For these characters, treat this result as maimed.

Passive Defense
Often, a defender may not have the opportunity to allocate tokens in a conflict, such as when he is unaware of an impending action or he underestimates the threat of a particular event. In this case, some passive defense is available. In this case, the active character must only overcome the defender's stat, rather than stat + skill. The defender may commit two tokens if he wishes to use his skill in defense, but may not commit additional tokens to defense in this case. If the defender spends one token, he may both use his skill and commit additional tokens to defending himself from the action.

Readying an Action
If a character wants to be ready to perform a new action without suffering the usual penalties for aborting, he can choose to commit a token to 'ready' an action. If the situation the character anticipates arises, he can perform the new action without spending a token to abort any other action, and can commit tokens normally. It may be necessary to abandon other actions to do this, but this can be done without penalty.

Item Effects
Some items will add to a character's ability to succeed in conflicts (for example, a bulletproof vest gives a +2 to the wearer's Constitution score for purposes of defense against firearms).

[MachMoth]

Okay, so it seems like a resource management game.  I like the way you handle injury.  Each wound is handled seperate, and enough small wounds can incapacitate a character, as well as severe damage killing them outright.  I must say, it's a very effective damage model.  Do you have a specific method in mind for tracking how severe a wound is?  The levels of committing, spending, and sacrificing add a nice level of depth.  Keep up the good work.  I'd like to see this one completed

[Jeph]

I like how it's done. However, the scale is such that extra tokens will be...not so important, if you decide to commit them to a conflict. For example, if I have Dex 6 and Guns 3, then commiting an extra token is only going to raise my abilities by 10%. I suggest that you do Stats on a skill of 1-5 (2 average), and starting action tokens are 3+average of your stats.

Actually, the "average of your stats" thing is pretty pointless if you're going to to a point-based stat purchase thingy, as then everyone will have the same average. Maybe base it off of their lowest stat?

Third, average does not exist. Therefore, I suggest it be taken out of the difficulty table. ;-) Also, you shouldn't have 'easy' tasks that need a skill of 3 for the average person (with a stat of 5) to be succesfull at. Maybe revise it t something like this (numbers in parenthesis are if you use the 1-5 scale):

Easy 4 (1)
Routine 7 (3)
Slightly Difficult 10 (5)
Difficult 13 (7)
Extremely Difficult  16 (9)

Just my $0.02,
Jeff

[Brennan Taylor]

Okay, so it seems like a resource management game.  I like the way you handle injury.  Each wound is handled seperate, and enough small wounds can incapacitate a character, as well as severe damage killing them outright.  I must say, it's a very effective damage model.

Thanks! I must give credit where credit is due and say that this was inspired by the Burning Wheel injury mechanic (thanks, Luke!).

Do you have a specific method in mind for tracking how severe a wound is?

Not quite sure what you mean by this. Can you clarify?

[Brennan Taylor]

I like how it's done. However, the scale is such that extra tokens will be...not so important, if you decide to commit them to a conflict. For example, if I have Dex 6 and Guns 3, then commiting an extra token is only going to raise my abilities by 10%. I suggest that you do Stats on a skill of 1-5 (2 average), and starting action tokens are 3+average of your stats.

I was a bit concerned about the scale. This is a good suggestion, and the 1-5 scale was one I was considering. I think it does actually work better, because then the overall pools are smaller. One of the issues with a resource management system like this is keeping the resources to a manageable level. I don't want so many tokens flying around that it gets too difficult for players (and especially GMs) to keep track.

Actually, the "average of your stats" thing is pretty pointless if you're going to to a point-based stat purchase thingy, as then everyone will have the same average. Maybe base it off of their lowest stat?

Another excellent point. I like your idea of basing the pool off the lowest stat. This really discourages folks giving their character short shrift somewhere unless it is driven by character considerations.

Third, average does not exist. Therefore, I suggest it be taken out of the difficulty table. ;-) Also, you shouldn't have 'easy' tasks that need a skill of 3 for the average person (with a stat of 5) to be succesfull at. Maybe revise it t something like this (numbers in parenthesis are if you use the 1-5 scale):

Easy 4 (1)
Routine 7 (3)
Slightly Difficult 10 (5)
Difficult 13 (7)
Extremely Difficult  16 (9)

Just my $0.02,
Jeff

Cool. The numbers here were where I felt this was weakest. Great suggestions, all! Thank you, Jeff.

[MachMoth]

What I mean is you have three damage levels where you have to spend a token.  The difference in them is how to get them back.  This is great, but I was just wondering how you intend to tell them apart after the fight.

Say I have one token spent for being wounded and one for seriously wounded.  Bother tokens will take some time to get back.  So, will you just make some notes on the character sheet, or did you have some uber-creative method for tracking when the are... um, unspent.

[Luke]

Thanks! I must give credit where credit is due and say that this was inspired by the Burning Wheel injury mechanic (thanks, Luke!).

You're welcome.

I don't understand the where's and why's of Action tokens vs Rolling dice to resolve a conflict. Aside from allowing a character to participate, what does an action token do for a player? What is the difference of committing one token to the conflict and committing several? Does this modify dice in any way?

-Luke

[Brennan Taylor]

What I mean is you have three damage levels where you have to spend a token.  The difference in them is how to get them back.  This is great, but I was just wondering how you intend to tell them apart after the fight.

Say I have one token spent for being wounded and one for seriously wounded.  Bother tokens will take some time to get back.  So, will you just make some notes on the character sheet, or did you have some uber-creative method for tracking when the are... um, unspent.

I don't know if it's uber-creative, really. I was just thinking of a list of wound rankings where the player can note how many of each wound he has (hash-marks or whatever). That way you can tally up spent tokens at a glance, and you know how long they will take to recover.

I must add that many of the character types in this game are supernatural, and will have regeneration abilities, allowing them to recover these tokens much more quickly than the standard rules allow.

[Brennan Taylor]

I don't understand the where's and why's of Action tokens vs Rolling dice to resolve a conflict. Aside from allowing a character to participate, what does an action token do for a player? What is the difference of committing one token to the conflict and committing several? Does this modify dice in any way?

This game system is diceless. The character compares skill + stat to determine if he is successful based on the opposing test (either a person opposing the character, or an object or circumstance). If the character's score is higher, he is successful. The point of committing more action tokens is to increase his chance of success -- each extra token spent adds 1 to his total.

[Luke]

gotcha.
thought i saw a d10 in there somewhere, but must have been confused from the universal rpg thread.

go brennan with the non-d20 non-dice!