[Oracle] A newb brainstorms Narrativism

[Dick Page]

Greetings, all,

While I can't pretend to have a full knowledge of the Forge theory of RPGs, nor the full range of RPG titles, nor what makes a workable system, I have yet enjoyed reading these articles and forums for the last few weeks and expanding my perceptions of what an RPG is.

With that in mind, I thought I'd share a brainstorm I had at work the other day for a Narrativist scene resolution.  I suppose my primary question is: is this a system worth pursuing and building into a full game?  with subquestions: is it un-innovative or already done? unworkable? built on poor conceptions?  More specific questions follow the description of the system.

ORACLE
Taking its title from the Fortune-In-The-Middle dice mechanic used, Oracle builds the resolution of a scene before narration, then allows players to alter that resolution by use of character descriptors, ranked in effectiveness.

Characters:
Characters in Oracle are built on four general descriptive words of the player's choosing.  Adjectives, professions, and skills are all allowed.  Eg. Stealthy, witty, clever, soldier, sailor, swordplay, cooking, etc.  We'll call these "traits."  Each trait is assigned a die type based on the character's level of ability in it.  d6 is the lowest, but still represents an advantage, d8, d10, and d12 are the other possibilities.  Characters have one skill of each level.

Scene Building:
Before a scene, the players state their intended goals in the resolution of the scene, and conditions that they would like to accomplish as well.  For example, a goal might be to enter a castle by secret.  Conditions would be: don't be seen, don't get caught, don't get hurt, and leave no trace.

One die is rolled for each goal and condition.  The GM selects the difficulty of each goal and condition and assigns a die type to it, d4 - d12.  This pool of dice is rolled before any narration.  The result rolled is the "Oracle," ie. what the result of the scene will be without player intervention (though not without character action).  Lower numbers are better, and represent a more complete resolution of the goal.

The players then roll their own dice pools, which is their four trait dice.  Higher numbers are better, and represent greater ability to affect the scene as it plays out.

The scene is then narrated.  The GM presents the setting and NPC actions, players narrate the actions of the characters.  The GM may call for a "crucible" whenever a goal is challenged during the narration.  The degree of challenge is represented by the number on the die, a higher number is a more difficult challenge.  The GM also declares which characters will have an opportunity to challenge the goal.

At each crucible, the players have two options.  The first option is to switch the die of the goal under challenge with the die of a goal with a lesser roll, interpreted as surpassing one goal by increasing the difficulty of another.  Naturally, the player must narrate how this has happened.  The second option is to simply overcome the challenge by using a trait.  The player selects an applicable trait with a roll equal to or higher than the crucible, and narrates how he uses this trait to overcome the challenge.  The level of the goal difficulty is reduced; the goal die is replaced with a die one level down, ie. d12 to d10, d10 to d8, etc.  d4 remains the lowest level.  Both the trait die and goal die are rerolled.  When a goal is accomplished or a condition no longer applies, simply remove the dice from the scene pool.  Goals and conditions may be added or removed as suits the narration.  The scene ends when all goals are accomplished or rendered irrelevant.  The GM interprets the numbers remaining on the condition die to determine how well the characters accomplished their goal in the end.

That's it.  Obviously it's pretty rough.  Here are some more specific questions:
Is the FitM mechanic really useful?  Would the system be better if the GM simply rolled each challenge at the moment of narration, and the player rolled their skill then too?

Is it clear how the system works?  Does it make sense as a method for building scenes?

Are the characters well-defined?  Anything that might be done better for character creation?

And, of course, does it have potential?

Thanks a lot,

[montag]

It probably won't help much, but here's some first impressions:
- it seems awfully complex and I can imagine it might be difficult to come up with enough conditions in certain cases.
That aside, how would you handle conditions depending on each other, like being seen and being caught? While the latter is technically possible without the former, I can imagine it might be awkward in some cases to narrate appropriate outcomes.
- as far as I can tell there is no disincentive other than aethetic sensibilities which keeps players from trying to use their best trait all the time.
- it's not clear to me, what constitutes a success, that is, how low the condition die has to be for something like "complete victory/no problems at all".
- what is the benefit of the system? IMO for that kind of system to be useful it should provide "results" in terms of "springboard for creativity". From glancing at it, in the raw state it's in, it seems that your system offers more restrictions and opportunities for strategic thought and thus might be easily replaced with a system of fortune + ressource allocation which would make for a cleaner system.
Maybe an example will help get that last point across (based on how I imagine gameplay to be like):
Goal as above, GM rolls Goal:6, unseen: 5, traceless: 4, not caught: 2; Player 1 rolls: Sailor: 7, swordplay: 4; witty: 4; sneak: 3; and then goes: "Ok, so first I'll have to shift unseen down and I'll have to keep an eye towards rerolling my d10 in swordplay, then hopefully use that in another run against not cuaght to get that down, so, when the Guards are about to spot me (unseen), I'll run away ... no wait, can't do that, I'd fail the condition, so I'd better disguise myself as a farmer, that should allow me to switch, as it makes it more difficult to avoid capture, but wait, I'd be seen ..."(I'm to tired to think of a proper solution right now)

Sorry for sounding so negative, I definitively think the system has potential, if wrapped up nicely. You might want to have a look at "Pretender" for something remotely similar, and FWIW I was highly sceptical of the system at first sight as well. ;)

[timfire]

I think I follow. An example would be helpful. I'm a little confused about when/why/how a 'crucible' can be called. I think the mechanic is defintiely workable. I can't say whether something similiar has ever been done before or not.

I did want to say, though, that there's nothing inherently Nar about the mechanic. I mean, there's no addressing premise involved. It's just a resolution mechanic, and would support any of the 3 CA's fine.