[The Cauldron] Conflict Resolution Mechanics Help

[Joshua Tompkins]

I'm having some problems with a game I'm working on, and I was hoping you guys might find some time to help me out.  I've been reading the Forge for a couple of months, now, and two things have stood out for me:  first, you guys seem to be a never-ending font of good game design ideas, and second, you tend to take it easy on first time designers.  I'm going to need both of those qualities, I think.

The Background:

(I know this is probably boring, but it's sort of necessary to understand the design problems I'm having, so please bear with me for a second.)

The game I'm working on is called "The Cauldron".  I'm aiming for it to be a settingless, Narrativist game.  If it clears anything up, the Cauldron was originally going to be a Pool variant, but lately I've drifted some from that idea.

The Cauldron's resolution system is pretty simple – it's an all-opposed, dice pool mechanic.  The players roll a bunch of dice (called the "conflict pool"), and the highest single result wins.  Ties are discarded.  The winner of the conflict makes a Monologue of Victory, just like in the Pool.

A conflict pool starts with two dice, provided by the GM (here called the Narrator).  Players can build the conflict pool based on their character's mechanical components.

A Cauldron character has four parts (collectively called Traits), mechanically speaking:

The Pool – a fluctuating resource made up of dice.  Players can spend Pool dice to Activate their character's Talents, or to add more dice to the conflict pool.

Talents – Simply put, things the character can do.  This includes both mundane skills like Gun-Fu, Kung-Fu or Computer-Fu (those aren't official names, though they are valid ones – Talents can be pretty much whatever the player wants them to be), and supernormal skills like magic, telepathy, or super powers.

During character creation (the Cauldron uses a point-buy system), Talents are the easiest Trait type to buy – only one point per level.  During a conflict roll, though a Talent is extremely powerful – they provide a flat bonus to all dice rolled.  The catch is, though, that players have to pay to use their character's Talents – one die per level.  If you don't have enough dice in your Pool, you can't use the Talent.

Edges – ever notice how some people just have a thing, something that always seems to make sure they end up on top?  Well, those are Edges.  Edges can be just about anything, really (subject to the approval of the Narrator), from equipment to in-game resources to whatever.

Edges sit dead center in the cost bracket during character creation – two points per level.  During a conflict roll, Edges add dice to the conflict pool.  Only one Edge can be used per conflict.

Aspects – as I seem them now, Aspects define what makes a character who he is.  Relationships, past experiences, emotional drives, anything that defines the character in relation to the world around him can be an Aspect.  What would Spider-Man be without Aunt May?  Batman without the death of his parents?  Superman without Lois or Ma and Pa Kent?

The Problem

The problem at this point is that I don't know what Aspects are supposed to do mechanically.  I see them as a great way to pull elements of the character that are normally only roleplayed into the mechanical aspect of the game.  I'd like them to have confer both a mechanical advantage during a conflict, as well as being the major source of dice to replenish the character's Pool.

The best I've been able to come up with so far is this:

During a conflict roll, Aspects allow a player to re-roll some of his dice, taking the new result instead of the old one.  Any re-rolled dice with better results are added to the character's Pool.  The player may choose how many dice to re-roll (up to the level of the Aspect), but must re-roll at least a number of dice equal to one-half of the Aspect's level, rounded up.  During character creation, Aspects cost three points per level.

I've also thought about this as a possible solution:

During a conflict roll, Aspects add additional dice to the conflict pool, just like Edges.  The difference is that, at the end of the conflict, any dice added to the conflict pool from Aspects are added to the character's Pool, regardless of the eventual result of the conflict roll.  The catch is that the player must justify his use of a character's Aspect both to the Narrator before the roll and, should he win the conflict, in his Monologue of Victory.

So – any thoughts about how to handle this problem?  Should I perhaps separate the reward mechanic and the advantage mechanic for Aspects into two separate things?  I thought about that, but it seemed very cool to have the primary reward mechanic (dice in the Pool can also be used at the end of a session to purchase more Traits, or to improve new ones) be tied to the character's connection to himself and the world around him.

-joshua

[Ben O'Neal]

Hmm, I'm havinga bit of trouble visualising how your game would play out (which was one of my problems I had with The Pool). Perhaps if you could give us a brief example of the sort of play you'd like to see, using just the Pool, Talents, and Edges, then it'd be easier to come up with interesting ways to use Aspects to enhance that.

I would, however, suggest a different name for either your Pool trait, or the conflict pool. It's too easy to confuse them right now (for me anyways).

Also, I know you want your game to be a "settingless, Narrativist game", but what is it's focus? What sorts of themes does your game promote? How, specifically, do the rules support player's addressing premise? I'm guessing that Aspects will play a big role in this, but I'm not so sure at the moment. If all your game is, is a conflict resolution mechanic and a way of describing a character, it isn't much of a game. I remember Vincent once mentioning that whilst a game needs all five components of exploration (Character, Setting, Situation, System, and Color) in order to be a game, that you can get away with packaging a minimum of three, and leaving the players to invent the last two. For example, my game has Character, Situation, System, and Color, and players bring their own setting. Right now you have Character and System, so what else would you add to make this a viable and interesting package?

I guess this all could be seen as just an elaborate way of asking "What do players and/or their characters do in your game?". This question gets asked all the time here, because once we have a clear understanding of the answer, we can give specific and helpful advice in how to promote and enhance this. All the brilliant mechanic ideas in the world amount to nothing if they don't support a clearly defined goal of play.

Looking forward to your responses so I can do my best to help you out.

-Ben

[Nathan P.]

I'm also interested in your answers to Bens questions. Until then, however, this popped in my head - maybe Aspects could suspend the rule that you have to pay dice for Traits. Keeping with your superhero examples - if Spidey is fighting to protect Aunt May, he fights harder and with less restriction than otherwise. In game terms, he could use his Webslinging Trait without paying dice up to his level of Aunt May Trait.

Another thought - maybe this could be balanced out by taking negative Aspects, which would force you to pay 2 dice when using a Trait instead of one.

Again, answer the questions above by all means, but thats what immediately came to mind.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'd like to see the role of Aspects entirely distinguished from those of Edges. Otherwise we just have two names for the same thing, or two ways of tweaking the same thing.

Instead, why not have Aspects be entirely focused on dice pool replenishment? I'm borrowing here from The Dying Earth, in which you use up your dice in conflicts, but then get them back by doing "character schtick stuff" like taking a hot bath or engaging in a hairsplitting argument.

The thing I have in mind that's not like the Dying Earth idea, though, is that the Aspect may be involved in the present conflict in some way. In TDE, you go and take your hot bath or whatever afterwards to get your dice back. Maybe for this game, you can do that, but you can also involve the Aspect right away and bump up your pool right there in the conflict.

Sort of a cross between TDE and With Great Power.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

Hmmm.

Well, backing up a step I'd eliminate the distinction between Talents and Edges.  Its really just an artificial construct anyway.  The reason I'd do this is because I don't think the rules you have for Talents will really work the way you want.

If you have any sort of sizeable dice pool going on, the odds of rolling at or near the maximum on at least one die is going to be pretty high.  (especially if your using d6s, less so but still fairly likely with d10s).

What this means is that pretty routinely you'll max your pool and I'll max mine and then it will just come down to who had the higher Talent.

Even if you combat this tendency by keeping dice pools small (under 1/2 of the max value of the dice would be a good rule of thumb) you still have Talents be very very powerful in a very narrow range.  Even if the odds of rolling a 10 on a d10 is not automatic, the odds of rolling at least a 7 will be pretty close.  That means pretty much the worst I could imagine rolling (barring a hugely unlucky throw) is a 7+Talent.  Since the best you could roll is a 10 + Talent it means that if my Talent is 4 points higher than yours victory is still pretty much mine automatically.

What makes this especially powerful is that number of dice really don't matter much.  Once I get a number of dice into my pool so that I can reliably count on a 7 or better it won't matter if you have a million dice in your pool if my Talent is 4 points higher (a similiar relationship exists at 8 or better with 3 points higher or 9 or better with 2).


My idea would be this:

You can add dice to the roll directly from the Pool at 1:1.

Or if you have a Talent/Edge you can activate that Talent for 1 Pool die and add a number of dice equal to the Talent.  So with a Talent of 3 you're adding dice at 3:1.

A Talent, Edge of 1 is thus mechanically no advantage except to confirm that the character does have that Talent or Edge in circumstances where not having it would make a roll impossible.


As far as Aspects go I like the reroll method just fine.  Adds another layer to the mechanic, but Ron's refresh idea is also a good one.

I think I'd definitely NOT make it cost more than an edge or a Talent though.  Whether a reroll is "better" than a straight extra die is debateable, but more importantly you don't want to discourage players taking the things that really make their character's interesting (like relationships).

If using the reroll idea, I'd be tempted to make Aspects double edged.  You reroll the dice, possibly getting a higher score, but for every 1 that you roll you discard one of your highest dice.  This would reflect the danger of drawing upon powerful emotions to fuel you.  

I'd also be tempted to allow players to volutarily double down on their Aspects.  Reroll double the normal number of dice, but now get a "botch" (so to speak) on 1s or 2s.

[Joshua Tompkins]

Okay, first off:  wow.  Thanks for the great input, guys.

So, okay, Ben:

Also, I know you want your game to be a "settingless, Narrativist game", but what is it's focus? What sorts of themes does your game promote? How, specifically, do the rules support player's addressing premise? I'm guessing that Aspects will play a big role in this, but I'm not so sure at the moment.

I think that you've pretty much hit the nail on the head with this one - to be perfectly honest, I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted the focus of the game to be.

Well, I spent most of my free moments this morning thinking about it, and here's what I came up with:

I'd like to have each character submit a Kicker before the first session of a Cauldron game.  From what I've read here on the Forge, a Kicker is supposed to be some event that's going to change the character's life forever, one way or another - that's exactly what I'm looking for.

What I'd like to explore in the game is how a character can use his (I like to refer to characters in the masculine and the Narrator in the feminine) social connections, both internal and external, to help him deal with the life-changing events confronting him.

Does that make any sense?

I think that the addition of the Kicker helps define the (at least initial) goal of play - resolving the character's Kicker and any consequences thereof.  I'm not sure, but I think that this provides at least a rudamentary Situation component for the game.  

(I've actually got some questions about Color, but those are for another forum.)

I'm thinking about new names for the conflict pool - it didn't hit me until I reread my post how confusing trying to distinguish between those two actually are.

By the way, Ben, I just read Scarlet Wake - very cool.  I put it on my list of Games To Play Real Soon Now.

-joshua

[Joshua Tompkins]

Hmm.  You guys are giving me too many good, related ideas here for me to reply to them separately and still maintain any sort of coherence, so this is going to necessarily be a sort of omnibus reply post.

Ralph:

You can add dice to the roll directly from the Pool at 1:1.

Or if you have a Talent/Edge you can activate that Talent for 1 Pool die and add a number of dice equal to the Talent. So with a Talent of 3 you're adding dice at 3:1.

A Talent, Edge of 1 is thus mechanically no advantage except to confirm that the character does have that Talent or Edge in circumstances where not having it would make a roll impossible.

This is a great idea, I think.  I was having thoughts myself that Talents might have been a little overpowered, though I never really worked out just how much they really are.  This is going to make it into the game, I think, so please consider your ideas stolen, and with my thanks.

I'm also pretty fond of the idea that using powerful emotions for fuel can sometimes result in getting burned.  I've got to think for a minute about how I can work that idea in.

Nathan:

Negative Aspects are a cool idea.  I like the concept of weird social or emotional problems effecting the game's mechanics.  If I can figure out a way to get that idea in, you can consider your idea stolen, too.  Thanks!

Ron:

Single purpose Aspects are a good idea.  Having the reward mechanism directly tied into the use of emotional and social factors is pretty much exactly what I was looking for.

So the real question here is, how can all of this work together?

Well, I like the three-layer system.  If possible, I'd like to include the ratio-boost Talent mechanic, the pool-refresh Aspect stuff, and the re-roll/botch deal in the game.

I don't want to introduce artificial distinctions into the game, but how about this for differentiating between Talents and Edges:

Talents are things you can do, things for which you've been trained or have had experience with.  They're internal to the character, though they probably have some external consequence.  This is pretty mundane stuff; Talents might be called Skills or Powers in other games, though Talents can be pretty broad – you might have a Talent called "Navy Seal", for example.

Talents work pretty much as Ralph describes them:  they can be activated during a conflict to increase the ratio of dice spent vs. dice put into the conflict pool (or whatever it ends up being called).

Edges are just things – possessions, resources, scraps of knowledge about the situation a character might find himself in that help to give him an advantage, something that works sometimes to just turn the tides of the conflict in his favor.  These things are external to the character, like a lucky rabbit's foot, or the phone number of a prominent politician, or a signature weapon or item.

Edges are where we find the re-roll mechanic.  You can re-roll any number of dice, up to the level of the Edge, but the catch is, you have to keep whatever you get, and rolling a 1 forces you to discard your highest dice result.  Lady Luck is a fickle mistress.

You can also "double-down", re-rolling twice the normal number of dice.  You don't have to worry about botching the roll, either, but regardless of whether you win or lose the conflict, you must permanently reduce the level of the Edge by one – leaning so hard on it has reduced it's effectiveness for you – too many people know the phone number for it to be useful, and that rabbit foot's luck seems to be running out.

As for the negative Aspects – maybe taking a negative Aspect can give you more points during character creation.  You can use a negative Aspect just like a normal one if you're ever in a situation where you think it'd be useful (treat it like a positive Aspect), but here's the thing – if you're ever in a situation where the Narrator thinks the negative Aspect would be effecting your behavior, she can "tempt" you with it, offering you a dice for your Pool to allow her to perform a Monologue, factoring your negative Aspect into the situation.  You can refuse, but if you do, you have to give up a die from your Pool.  If you refuse, the Narrator can "up the ante", offering you two dice for your Pool, and so on up to the level of your negative Aspect.

That system isn't original – I think it comes from Fate, maybe? - but when I saw it the first time it struck me as being a remarkably cool way to handle the situation.

What do you guys think?  I'm getting excited about these mechanics – they seem like a seriously marked improvement over what I had before.

-joshua

[Joshua Tompkins]

Getting some input on the Cauldron's mechanics has really stimulated my thoughts about how it's supposed to work.  My stated goal for the game was to explore how characters applied their social and emotional connections (which I'm calling Aspects for now) in trying navigate a suddenly rapidly-changing world.

After staring at that goal for a while, I had a thought:  why do Aspects have to be static?  I'm thinking that making Aspects dynamic, by providing mechanics to model the character's changing loyalties and attitudes, might alter the Premise of the game for the better, but I'm not sure how to express that change – it's sort of tickling at the edges of my mind for now.  Of course, dynamic Aspects would have in-game impact, as players suddenly found that refreshing their character's Pools simply couldn't be done in the same ways as before.

More on the actual mechanics of this in a few hours, after I've had some time to think about what this change might imply for the game.  Any thoughts from you guys?

-joshua

[inky]

I've read through the earlier posts, and I'm still not clear on the benefit of having all three of Talents, Edges, and Aspects. Like, where does "I learned a little karate from my grandfather" fall in? Or "I'm a deadly shot with my holdout pistol"? Or "I became a swordsman to get revenge for the death of my father"? (I dunno, possibly the answer in all these cases would be to enforce them being simpler, and break these concepts up into two Talents/Edges/Aspects).

I guess my confusion partly comes from them all being things you activate, and the activation does something fairly different in every case. Normally I would suggest scrapping Edges, but from reading your description it seems like you think that's the cool thing about your system. So, hmm, what if you made Edges and Aspects work the same way? The difference would be one would be internal, so damage there hurts the character, and the other is external, so damage there hurts the character's relationships.

[Ben O'Neal]

Hey Joshua,

Now we're talking! I'm now starting to get a real idea about what themes you'd like to crop up in play, and I think we're on our way to discovering how your game will make those themes work. But if you'll indulge me a suggestion:

My stated goal for the game was to explore how characters applied their social and emotional connections (which I'm calling Aspects for now) in trying navigate a suddenly rapidly-changing world.

How about instead of the characters just having to face and deal with a changing world, they also have to deal with something changing about themselves. Alternately, the characters can be changing so drastically, as to completely alter their view of the world, and now they have to cope with suddenly finding themselves emotionally and mentally cold and isolated where they used to find comfort?

The game could then have a focus on the dynamics between a changing character, and how they try to deal with the change by appealing to their social contacts, who in turn are changing in response to their perceptions of the character.

A thought occurs: perhaps Aspects are like fragmented glimpses of a character, sort of like the different ways they are percieved by different people. They could have a handful of different Aspects, each one tied to someone close to them, which can be drawn upon to do stuff, and the results of the rolls could alter them for better or worse? So "Aspects" become less of something the character possesses, and more something that defines the character socially. This could be used to great effect in a game about social exploration, IMHO.

I dunno if this is coherent or useful at all, I just woke up like 5 minutes ago to wait for a phonecall.

More on the actual mechanics of this in a few hours, after I've had some time to think about what this change might imply for the game.

Well, my advice, and this is spoken only because I find it most effective for myself, is to keep my mind focused on grandiose goals, and let it mull over these goals in play, and how mechanics might support it. The key is to keep the goal right there and not lose sight of it for the details of mechanical goodness.

Ok, gotta go.

-Ben

[Joshua Tompkins]

Ben:

How about instead of the characters just having to face and deal with a changing world, they also have to deal with something changing about themselves.

Ha!  Premise!  That's exactly what I'm looking for!

Spent this evening thinking about what that could mean, and what I really want from the game.

What I finally came up with was refreshingly simple:  I want to see cool characters doing cool things - but, more importantly, I want to explore how who the character is effects what they do, and how that "who" changing over time changes the corresponding "what".

So, spend some more time thinking about that, and about how I could translate that into an actual game.  Try this on for size:

You may not have realized it yet, but you are a Hero, and that makes you special.   Not everyone can be what you are; it's not something that can be taught.  Heroes truly are born, not made.

You might be King Arthur, or Napoleon.  You might be George Patton, or John F. Kennedy.  Those things are certainly possible.  But then, you might be a temp worker at Kinko's, or a secretary in an office building.  Being a hero isn't about what you do – it's about how you feel.

You see, heroes feel stronger then most, believe deeper, are driven by their hopes and dreams and desires harder.  What makes you a hero is also what makes you human – your connections to the world around you.  Without your hopes, your beliefs, your relationships, you wouldn't be what you are.

Be careful, though – your connections to the world aren't static.  They can change at any moment, and they will.  What seems right today might not, when tomorrow comes around.

You can be a shining beacon for hope and truth... or not.  You can work to make a difference, quietly improving the world around you... or not.  You can rescue a child's cat from a tree... or you could be the one who put the cat up there in the first place.  Who you are – and, more importantly, who you will become – is up to you.

In the end, only one question is important:  how will you change the world?  More importantly – how will the world change you?

Any thoughts?

...

Oh, yeah, now I just have to come up with some mechanics to support that.  *grins*

More to come.

Thanks for all the help so far,
-joshua

[Nathan P.]

First off, steal away. I well know that pretty much anything said here can spark some cool thoughts in your own head.

Now, here's some conceptual mechanics stuff I thought of after reading your premise. Personally, I latched onto Aspects as the neato-cooly thing, so I'm primarily going to address those.

Whatever else Aspects, whether positive or negative (if you go that route) mean mechanically, they also seem to be a good measure of the changes around and in the characters - maybe they realize that the person they thought they loved really isn't worth it, or they gain a new ambition to topple a local political figure. Aspects could be a dynamic mechanic, changing as the character tries to strengthen or weaken them. Maybe active support of positive Aspects leads to character improvement, and leaving negative Aspects negative can lead to character devolution. Basically, I'm thinking Aspects could be a good staging point for an overall reward system.

I dunno how any of that fits into the rest, but there's some of my random thoughts.

[John Kirk]

Joshua,

Your description of Aspects seems to correlate to what I call an Idiom.  An Idiom is an attribute whose value rises or falls based on a character's actions with regard to his beliefs, relationships, and emotions (love, hate, etc.)  You might want to take a look at how I implemented Idioms in my game by downloading The Handbook of Hazards and House Rules from my website.  Idioms are in the very front of the book.  You can ignore everything else on the site for the purposes of this discussion.

Now, you don't have to go to all the trouble of writing up a bunch of different Idioms for players to choose from like I did as long as you are clear about what Idioms are and when they are applied.  For other (less verbose) examples, you can look at Sorcerer's Humanity attribute, The Riddle of Steel's Spiritual Attributes, and My Life with Master's Love attribute.  All of these allow players to define what makes their character's "tick" and then actively modify the Idiom values based on how they role-play their characters.

Just as an example for what you might do in your game, you could say that a character's Aspect(s) must be clearly defined by the player.  The attribute is applied to conflict resolutions whenever situations arise concerning the Aspect's subject (such as whenever Superman must rescue Lois Lane).  Maybe the Aspect adds directly to the dice pool or something.  Anytime a player has his character do something that is personally detrimental or self-sacrificing for the sake of his Aspect's subject, the value goes up by one point.  Anytime the player performs some action against his Aspect, the value drops by a point.  Or maybe pertinent actions cause rolls to occur to see if the Aspect value changes.

You could allow multiple Aspects if you feel the need, any of which could be used as a resource from which to draw to build the character's Pool (or other characteristics).  This would closely follow the way Spiritual Attributes are handled in The Riddle of Steel.

[Joshua Tompkins]

Nathan, John, thanks so much for the great ideas.

John, it's funny you should mention TROS, as that game's SAs are very similar to what I've finally come up with for the belief system in my game.

EDIT:  By the way, John, I took a look at your website.  There's definately some cool ideas in your Handbook.  I thought the Cognoscente Idiom was a particularly interesting character concept.

The names of your books were cool, too - I've got a real sort of "old skool" D&D feel to them.  Nice.

Nathan, Aspects (they're actually called something different now) did end up being very dynamic.  I had to eventually drop the negative Aspect idea though, as I just couldn't make it fit.  Maybe it'll end up in another game, someday.

Anyway, everyone, I just wanted to say thanks again for the great ideas and suggestions.  I've thought about them all, and after a long think about what I wanted from the game, I think I've finally hit upon the right combination of System and Premise to do just what I want.  Along the way, it picked up some new ideas, a few new influences, and a new name.

All of that warrants a new thread, though, I think.  Keep an eye out for it soon!

-joshua