Worried my system is too simple

[Tully305]

Hi,

I've been working on my game now for over a year, mostly setting and background, and I've been avoiding the dreaded mechanics issue because it really is not my strong suit.  I wanted to use a system that was realistic yet still easily playable (don't we all want that?!?!?).  Here's what I came up with so far:

1D10 is rolled for each attribute and then 2D10 is rolled and used as a pool to distribute among the attributes (approximately 7).

Skills are given in percentages for success (for instance having to roll under a % to achieve success)

I haven't approached combat in my game yet (combination of space fightercraft and planetside missions) as I'm still undecided about the basics of skill resolution.

The idea is that players would only need several D10's to play the game and prevent convoluted die pools to resolve play issues; however, I'm worried this is too simple or creating unbalanced probablities.

Any thoughts or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Geoff

[Matt Wilson]

Hey Geoff:

A percentage system is easy enough to process when it's time to roll, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

What's an average skill level? Like what's my skill at driving?

How often do you have to make rolls?

What happens when you fail a roll? Does failure at driving mean I got in an accident?

What are the modifiers to rolls? If you want to be realistic, you'll need some guidelines for that.

The tone of the game will help you make those decisions. Are the PCs badass heroes or regular shmoes? Is it pulp adventure or gritty noir?

[JamesSterrett]

Welcome to the Forge.  :)

At the risk of giving you an answer on the level of "A hammer is a very poor goldfish"  - an answer that is logical, yet doesn't seem to actually related to your question....

Are you sure you don't have too much system?  :)

More clearly....

What do you want to system to accomplish?

That's a deceptively difficult question to answer, and I don't know enough about your setting, or *your goals for that setting*, to answer it.  For a more detailed answer, you'll need to provide more detail - especially about what it is you want the system to do for the game.


[With due apologies if you're already cognizant of these options....]  As you peruse these boards, though, you may find that there are games that take a *very* different approach to what the system is meant to accomplish, and make startlingly different - and excellent - games as a result.

Four you might consider poking at (recommended not just for excellence, but because they've served as stepping-stones in my slow journey towards enlightenment.  Others will doubtless suggest others.)

Universalis: Which shows that you can have a game system that doesn't simulate anything in any way whatsoever, and still make a nifty game.

Sorceror: A game designed with laser focus, and a system beautifully streamlined to support the game's psychological-setting focus.

My Life with Master: Similar focus and streamlining, but putting everything into a specific plot framework, such that the plot arc is always the same - the game is interested in how the characters get there.

Donjon: Fun to play, and shows how handing the power to create stuff in the gameworld (NPCs, doors, traps, weapons - you name it) to the players can make for a much better play experience.

Maybe none of these are right for you, but I'm not sure where you're driving, thus the unclear reply from navigation.  :)

[Tully305]

thanks for the replys guys.

I guess I should expand more on my thoughts about my game.  

My view of roleplaying is solely about character development.  How my character gows and learns through adventures, successes and failures.  To me, that is the attraction of playing RPG's; the chance to create a a living, breathing 3-D character with strengths and flaws like us all.

As for the mechanics, they merely serve a purpose to increase or decrease the ability of the character to succeed in life.  For me, I feel a system that can keep the flow of gameplay going is essential to teh stroytelling process.  However, I don't want to abandon all sense of reality for the sake of quick conflict resolution.

Basically, my game deals with a human space fleet that is forced to combat an alien force that evolved from acestors of their own past; some elements of hard sc-fi, but mixed with some space opera.  I envisioned it to have elements of such TV shows as Space: Above and Beyond, Babylon 5 and Macross.  The characters will evolve and grow as the story unfolds in a metaplot over time.

I liek the idea of percentage rolls as they are simple and you can slowly increase the skill levels without making someone so powerful.  I think I will try and tweak some modifier ideas and find failure consequences to failed rolls.  

Thanks again for the replies.

Geoff

[John Uckele]

I have never designed a percentage system myself, but I do feel that they are a few things:

1) Easy to understand, I mean, your success rates are right there.

2) Have a natural enhancement method inline with the system.

3) Only use a few dice (yay!) (Cough, Werewolf from White-Wolf has ways of getting as many as 21 dice on one roll (with twinking of course))

I do have a question about your system: How do attributes relate to skills? I didn't see a connection so far.

That said, allow me to suggest some mechanics that seem like they are already along the lines that you are going in.

Skills are all represented by x%. When you use a skill you roll 1d100 (or 2d10 read funny) and the rolled value is n%. If n% is less than x%, your skill use succeeds.

Skills can be modified by instance modifiers (maybe changing your skill by ± 50% based the difficulty of task). The difficulty modifier will change our x% into y%. Now, we compare said n% to y%. If n% is less than y%, the skill use succeeds.

n% = 100% should always be considered a fail (possible fumble?).
n% = 1% should always be considered a success (possible critical?).

As far as criticals and fumbles, I feel that they are poorly placed % system. I myself can not think of a graceful way to deal with them.

Advancement: If during a 'time unit'* (session/story/adventure/scene/turn your choice) a skill is used, and failed, it becomes eligible for advancement at the end of the 'time unit'. For advancement, you roll the skill again (presumably unmodified, but maybe it would be modified to reduce the max skill level (maybe we want skills to cap at 95%)). If this second skill roll fails, you make a step in advancement.

The number of steps in advancement should be linear (because negative exponentiation is already built into the advancement method). It might be skill specific, or all skills might take the same number of uses before advancement, that's your call. So, for example: if we have 45% skateboarding, and we roll and fail, and then roll advancement and 'fail' the skill check, we might now have 45.1% skateboarding. It doesn't help until we accumulate the rest of the point, but it is progress.

*'time unit' is a very big decision to make. If you choose to have time unit be every turn, then a skill use prompts immediate possible advancement. Advancement will be fastest with this method, as you might manage +1% on a skill per story. It also will give the most often used skills more advancement (which is realistic, no?). At the same time, it does mean that every skill roll might take two rolls and a paper change, but that really isn't too bad.

Placing 'time unit' as a whole adventure will require some keeping track of failed skills, so that might get a bit cumbersome, but it shouldn't be too bad either. This will keep skills going up slower. This is really a personal call for you to make.

That's a mouthful of musing for you.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Welcome to The Forge.

I have designed a Percentile system, and I have to say that I love it.  It is indeed very easy to work with and play with.

However, one thing I wish I had done is create a quick, easy reference table for failures and successes.  It would have been broken down into 10% blocks.  So if you failed by 1-10% the tabled might have said "Uncertain outcome, roll again."  Or if you failed by 61-70% it might read, "Completely inept manuver.  Limb severed."  Something along those lines.

With a percentile system, the system fades very easily into the background.  No is time wasted comeing up with target numbers, adding in modifiers for this and that (unless you want to), and all the other things that go with roll-over systems.  However, it can seem a little distant at times, if you understand my meaning.  Adding in a success/failure result table will help make more concrete each result of the die.

Peace,

-Troy Costisick

[JamesSterrett]

All I have to add to the above is to think about what each die-roll resolves: the outcome of an action, or the outcome of a task?

Action resolution is "I swing my sword/shoot my laser: do I hit?"

Task resolution is "We have a fight using swords/lasers: who wins?"

The former is much better for crunchy combat detail; the latter is better at keeping the game flowing along.  All a matter of taste, but the method produce distinctly different game-feel.

[Tully305]

Wow,

I'm getting some really useful ideas here people...thanks!!!

Troy, I really like the idea of having degrees of success or failure; I think it adds a strong touch of realism without bogging down gameplay.

As far as tying my attributes to skills, I had the idea that attributes would add (or subtract) a one-time initial modifier to skills; and maybe in the case of exceptionally high attributes they would add a constant bonus modifier.

I think this discussion has provided some valuable framework for my ideas...thanks again everyone.

Now, I need to figure out a realistic yet simplistic way to achieve WWII style dogfights in space as well as ground fighting with vehicles and soldiers.  For the space dogfighting, I imagined using maneuvers like engage, disengage, evade, tail....etc.  Any suggestions?

[John Uckele]

If you are doing dogfights, it seems like you might see a lot of contested rolls. Of course, in a contested percentile... ^_^;;;...

Actually, one solution for a contested percentile is both players roll skills. If both players fail or both players succeed, then you need a tiebreaker (whoever has a higher score, or whoever has a lower roll, your choice). Other wise the character who's roll succeeded wins the contest.

Maybe that helps.

[M. J. Young]

A lot of the notions bandied about here are used in Multiverser, which does use a percentile system for all skills, relative success and relative failure, and a relatively simple botch system (although I have since heard of a simpler crit system--if the roll ends in zero, it's a crit, and critical success or critical failure depends on whether it's success or failure). Multiverser has both the no fail and the no chance scenarios, because the relative success/relative failure rules make the rolls meaningful. It also ties attributes to skills in ways that make both important.

In regard to your attributes and skills, why do you have both? I'm not saying there's no good reason--Multiverser has both. I am saying that a lot of games have both because they haven't realized they don't need them. If something isn't going to matter to play, you probably shouldn't bother with rules for it. If it's merely a matter of having some basis for boosting skills initially, you'd probably do better with something like Star Frontiers' primary skill areas, in essence saying that this character gets bonuses on skills of this sort. That direct connection will prevent a lot of arguments about what skills are bonused by what attributes--is my driving skill boosted by my awareness or my dexterity, or both?

Anyway, I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young

[Tully305]

M.J., thanks for the insight...

I too have wondered how I should handle the bonuses tied to attributes and skills.  I think in my mind it helps having attributes to help flesh out the character.  Lately I have been thinking about using the die rolls to achieve a number to assign categories for the attributes.  For instance, for strength...1-3 (weak), 4-6(moderate), 7-10 (strong), etc...although I think I would pick uniform terms for the attributes (low, moderate, high, exceptional).

I thought about breaking up the skills into attrubute categories, however, that may get confusing.  What are some of your opinions on one-time skill enhancers tied to attributes vs. skill roll modifiers tied to attributes?

Also, I'm not familiar with Star Frontiers, could anyone elaborate on the system or point me to some references on the web?

Geoff

[M. J. Young]

StarFrontiers was published by TSR right around 1980, plus or minus two years. Wizards of the Coast was giving away the core rules as a free download not too long ago (before the shakeup, though, I think), and might still have it on their site.

The significant point was the PSA or Primary Skill Area. I think I can outline that briefly.

The game had a restricted number of broad skills. Each skill belonged to one of three skill areas--Military, Biosocial, and Technological. Military skills included maybe a dozen different general weapon types, weaponless combat, and demolitions. Technological skills broke down to computers, robotics, and technician (which included driving). Biosocial was medical, psychosocial, and environmental. Nearly anything your character would ever need to "check" to do fell into one of those skills, and thus was assigned to one of those three skill areas.

Character improvement was skill driven (although you could improve attributes also). You gained small numbers of experience points at major breaks in the scenario (modules were generally episodic in design). These could be used to buy a skill at level one, or to advance any existing skill level by level to level six.

If a skill was outside your PSA, you could buy it and improve it, but it would cost you twice what it would cost someone for whom that was his PSA; but the skills in different PSAs also had different prices, which actually fit together quite well. Military skills cost 3 for military characters and 6 for everyone else; technological skills cost 4 for technological characters and 8 for everyone else; biosocial skills cost 5 for biosocial characters and 10 for everyone else. Thus skills in your PSA were always the cheapest for you. (Also, these were level one costs. To advance a skill to the next level, you had to pay that base cost times the level. Thus to advance a level five military skill to level six a military PSA character would have to pay 18 and anyone else would have to pay 36.)

I brought up the system because if the only function attributes would have in play is to determine the starting value of a new skill, it might be much clearer what skills benefit if you used something comparable. If you were to list specific categories of ability such as fine motor skills, feats of strength, acrobatics, intelligence, perception, interpersonal skills (you might think of others) and then state that each character gets one or possibly two of these, such that any skill which relies on or specifically benefits from that ability would start at a slightly improved level (or cost less to acquire and advance). You would reduce the confusion over which "attribute" bonuses this skill, and by how much, without losing anything that particularly mattered.

Regarding whether to have skill roll modifiers tied to attributes, I'd say that these can be good, with some caveats.

[*]The big one is this: if you can improve your skills by spending a resource, and you can improve your attributes by spending a resource, and your chance of success with a given skill is the skill plus the attribute, there is an inherent advantage to improving the attribute and ignoring the skill. If I can increase my skill by five percent improvement in my chance of success, that's a five percent bonus on one skill. The same improvement of my attribute gives me a five percent bonus on an unknown number of skills. Thus there's no good reason for me to improve skills, at least until my attributes have reached inhuman levels and can't improve further. Greater cost for attribute improvement is good, but it only moves the break point. To again cite Multiverser, a significant aspect here is that high skill values have added bonuses not available through high attribute values. For example, the speed at which the task can be done is improved by the skill but not by the attribute.[*]I'd also say that despite its prevalence in certain popular games, it's silly for the attribute-related bonus to be different from the attribute itself. To say that an attribute of 45 means you can add +9 to your roll just complicates the game. Unless there is a compelling reason for attributes to be on a different scale from bonuses (because they have another use in play), the bonus should be the attribute. Even if you're using your attributes for something else in play, it makes more sense to design the system such that the attribute number itself is always what is used, rather than some other value, whether the other value is derived by a simple computation or found on a chart. It's one more unnecessary step in play. Multiverser's attribute checks specifically are not percentile-based for that very reason: the attribute is itself the value added to the chance of success on the skill, which uses a percentile scale, so the attribute check is scaled to the value range of the attributes.[*]If the only real function of attributes otherwise is to "flesh out the character", it probably makes more sense to abandon these as a mechanical value, merely describe characters as "strong" or "smart" or with other terms that provide the necessary color, and build the desired values into the skills directly.[/list:u]
I hope that's helpful.

--M. J. Young

[Tully305]

Thanks for the help MJ, you've given me some really good ideas here.  To be honest, I've never really thought about using the actual attribute number as my modifier...that very concept even makes gameplay easier to deal with since I'm considering using 1D10 as my attribute rolls.

In choosing a master list of skills, should I break them down into attribute categories, with the attribute being the most likely one assocatied with the skill (i.e. Intelligence for a science skill)?

As of now, my attributes are:

Strength
Agility
Stamina
Intelligence
Intuition
Leadership

Are there any others that should be added or changed for better ones?

[Andrew Martin]

In choosing a master list of skills, should I break them down into attribute categories, with the attribute being the most likely one assocatied with the skill (i.e. Intelligence for a science skill)?

As of now, my attributes are:

Strength
Agility
Stamina
Intelligence
Intuition
Leadership

Are there any others that should be added or changed for better ones?

Do you have a reason why the system is meant to combine an attribute and a skill together? Would it be more "realistic" this way? Or is it another option for players to min-max their characters? Or is it this way because this it's the way most other RPGs do it?

[eef]

Since your game is going to be about advancement, why don't you tell us about the advancement mechanics?

There are standard advancement mechanics for percentile skills  (like other posters have mentioned), but these advancement mechanics mostly come out of systems where the skill system was important and the advancement was an add-on to that.  You're turning things around (which sounds really cool).

Let's start with what kind of advancement mechanic you want, and tehn make a reasonable skill system to fit that.