Critique this system for a game inspired by the tv show 24

[SpoDaddy]

Here's the system so far, I'm designing a game inspired by the tv show 24:


1) Roll N d12, where N is your attribute. Attributes are rated from 1 (feeble) to 7 (legendary)
2) Find the highest roll that is <= your skill. Skills are rated from 2-11, everybody has at least a 1 in every skill.
3) Add 1 to your highest roll for every other roll that is <= your skill.
4) If a one is rolled, add 1 to your high roll and then reroll the die. Continue rolling it and adding points for successes until a number other than one is rolled
5) If a die rolls your skill number exactly, double it's value before counting it as your highest successful roll
6) If the total is >= the target difficulty number, you succeed.
7) If the total is 0 and at least one 12 is rolled, you botch.


For example, let's say you're trying to shoot the tire of a moving car. Your dexterity is 4 and your firearms skill is 7. The GM gives you a target number of 6. You roll 4 12-sided dice and get a 5, 8, 3 and a 2. Your highest roll is a 5, however you also rolled two other dice under your skill number (the 3 and the 2). So you add a point to the high roll of 5 for each of those dice, giving you a total of 7. 7 beats the target number of 6, so you barely get the shot off that pegs the tire and the car screeches out of control....

Those are the basics of the system, please share your comments/feedback. I'm having a hard time determining the probability of hitting various target numbers using the system, if anyone can help me out with that I'd greatly appreciate it. I'm developing this system for a game I'm writing inspired by the tv show 24.

Another mechanic I've been thinking about is a way to measure how long it takes to complete a given action. Right now I'm thinking about implementing a system where everything takes a certain number of points, or as I've named them Ticks, representing time. Maybe the amount of ticks an action takes could equal your lowest successful die roll, or maybe actions should have standardized numbers of ticks they take to complete, with your highest successful roll being the number of ticks subtracted from that.  Suggestions on how to measure time in the rolling mechanism?  The only system I can think of that measures time in the die rolls is Godlike's One Roll Engine (The width of the roll).

[Mark Johnson]

You might consider the following...  

Have all skills be rated from 0-10, 0 = no skill to 10 = total mastery.   Roll the D12.  An 11 represents a success and counts as a 1, but the action is instantaneous and is done in 0 ticks.  A 12 represents failure, a 0, but adds one tick for each 12 that came up to the total number of ticks earned that round.

If the roll is successful, use the lowest dice rolled for the number of ticks used.  If the roll is unsuccessful, use the highest dice result (between 0 and 10 if using the above system) for the number of ticks used.  

Or allow the ticks be some sort of gambling resource that helps you if you are willing to take more time and hurts you if you want to use fewer ticks.

Use the Fudge scale for your attribute name levels for sheer familiarity (Terrible, Poor, Mediocre, Fair, Good, Great, Superb).  If you include three more above (Epic, Legendary, Mythic) and one to represent 0 (Abysmal) you could also use the names for your skill ladder as well.

A tick mechanism could be great for modelling intense situations (escaping from the sinking luxury liner, foiling the hijackers, rescuing the hostages as they are being shot one per minute); I am not sure that I would want to play this kind of game as a campaign as it sounds totally nerve-racking, but it would definitely make for good one-shots.  Your best bet for campaign play is to make the characters members of an elite SWAT team or something of that ilk, but I would not try to create much background setting or reocurring villains, and simply focus on intense situations with high stakes and impending doom as time just ticks along.

Could be interesting.

[Ole]

The basics of the system is intriguing. While it uses attributes and skills, the mechanism seems quite original.
One con is that results for characters with low attributes, but high skills will be very variable.

I would advise you to drop points 4) and 5) above. There are a number of reasons for this. If attributes average 4 theres a better than even chance that atleast one of these instances will occur for any given test, and a pretty good chance that both will occur. This increases the time it takes to arrive at a result (search time). I would expect  quick pace from a 24-based game, so search time should be kept low.
Instance 5) almost guarantees success for any reasonably skilled character.

[SpoDaddy]

Mark: Those are some really interesting points.  I agree with you, having to keep track of ticks for everything would get old fast.  There's got to be a way to simulate time in the mechanics that isn't so bookkeeping heavy and monotonous.  Maybe the key is to tie it into the initiative system.  Currently I'm planning on using an initiative system like the one in Deadlands, where everybody makes an agility roll and based on the result gets a certain number of playing cards.  You then count down from Ace-2, with each card representing 1 action.  Faster players have a better chance of going first (since they get more cards) and go more often (Since they get more cards).  I've always really liked that system, it's suspenseful and eliminates bookeeping.  Perhaps I should implement something along the lines of giving a bonus to the agility roll for initiative based on how many points you beat the target number of an action by?

Ole: I like point 4 because I want the system to be open ended somehow, so that anyone has at least a slim chance of doing anything.  Another option I was thinking of was merging points 4 and 5, and changing it to:

If you roll exactly your skill number, reroll the die.  If it's a success, add the total of the 2 rolls together for your base number.  If it rolls your skill number again, add and reroll.  If it fails, stop rolling it and stick with your skill number as the base number.

I like the crit if you roll your skill number because it simulates the fact that the more skilled you are, the better your critical successes are.  For example, a critical success for someone that's never fired a gun might simply be hitting a target 50 feet away.  For a professional marksman, a critical success would be more along the lines of tagging a moving target 300 feet away on a windy day.  I don't mind the "variable results from low attribute-high skill" situation, because it's realistic.  Someone with a lot of training but low natural talent would be really unpredictable, and there'd be times when their training would carry them through and times when their lack of talent would derail them completely.

Do you have any suggestions on better/faster ways to implement critical hits/open ended results into the system?

[Ole]

Ole: I like point 4 because I want the system to be open ended somehow, so that anyone has at least a slim chance of doing anything.  Another option I was thinking of was merging points 4 and 5, and changing it to:

If you roll exactly your skill number, reroll the die.  If it's a success, add the total of the 2 rolls together for your base number.  If it rolls your skill number again, add and reroll.  If it fails, stop rolling it and stick with your skill number as the base number.

Do you have any suggestions on better/faster ways to implement critical hits/open ended results into the system?

Nope, but meshing it into one mechanic is a good idea.

[SpoDaddy]

I've just been referred to a perfect way to handle time management in this system (a crucial factor in a game based on 24): The GM decides what the average amount of time a given task will take is.  The player can then sacrifice successful dice to divide that amount of time by 1+ number of successes sacrificed.  For example, your task is driving to the location of the kidnappers.  It has a target number of 5 and an average time of 30 minutes.  You roll your Agility of 4D12 against your driving skill of 7 and get a 6, a 3, a 4 and a 9.  Your base number is 6 (your highest successful roll) plus 1 for the 3 (7) plus 1 for the 4 (8).  If you needed to get there fast, you could sacrifice the 3 and the 4 to divide the 30 minutes by 1+ the 2 success dice=3, which would mean you'd have a roll of 6 (still better than 5, just not as good as the 8) but you'd get there in only 10 minutes (30 divided by 3).  Comments, suggestions?

[Spooky Fanboy]

Check out Jared Sorensen's InSpectres.

In sum, each adventure has a certain amount of points that has to be accumulated before the adventure can be considered won, after which it's pretty much over except for wrapping up loose ends.

[SpoDaddy]

That's a really cool concept in InSpectres, but how would you apply it to a specific 24-style situation?  For example, if you have to find and defuse a bomb, what if the player rolls well enough while driving their car somewhere to get enough points to complete the whole mission?

[Spooky Fanboy]

Just tossing out concepts, man. ;-)

Maybe you need to spread the points out for each hour, and for each hour, only so many points can be won. Each win not only pushes the players forward, but also kicks up the situation by a notch, so that the "bad guys" also move forward. (They also move foreward if the players screw up, but it gets worse.) Mix this with the fact that the players need to cover certain bases and learn certain things before they can roll, and you have a more dramatic system necessary for the kind of games you're trying to run.

Just some thoughts.

[SpoDaddy]

That's an interesting idea Spooky, could you elaborate?

[SpoDaddy]

Hmmm...what if I raised the value of each successful die from 1 to 2, and the time reduction from 10 percent to 20 percent?  Do you think that's too high?

[Spooky Fanboy]

Okay, sorry for the delay.

Divide a set amount of points by 24. Playtesting should give you a good idea of how many points to divide.

(You might want to divide the points so that, if the players "miss" a section, they can make it up in another section. Or, better yet, just divide the points that they missed into other sections and perhaps ramp up the difficulty for the remaining time sections.)

Meanwhile, if the players have exhausted the criteria for passing or failing a section, events become more dramatically critical. This requires planning in advance what will happen if the players fail (just have a script prepared, with options that benefit the players specific to each section if they succeed.)

As far as criteria to pass/fail, there should be specific clues that are necessary to discover and implement to solve the case.

About the points: they are an abstract representation of the difficulty necessary to unearth those clues/necessary information. Each successful roll nibbles away at those points until either the hour is up, or the players have succeeded, whichever comes first. If they succeed, or win more points than the hour is worth, you might want the excess points to come from the next hour. If they lose, that might add the remaining points to the next hour.

Roughly hewn, I grant you, but I'm barely awake yet and hopefully this should be enough to jump start ideas for your game.

[SpoDaddy]

Those are some great thoughts Spooky, I definately have a lot of thinking to do...