A dice-heavy Gamist romp

[Bailywolf]

I've been toying with a conflict engine involving dice pools for a month or two, and just looked back over my notes.  I've posted some of the proto-ideas hereabouts before, but I have a more concrete sense of what I'd like the mechanic to do.  Here are the bones-

Arenas

Characters are described in terms of how good they are in the setting's most significant arenas of conflict.  In the Jane Austen rpg, the only arena that really matters is Sociability.  In a classical fantasy game, Magery, Fighting, Thievery, Woodcraft etc.  

Characters may have other charactersitics...or their abilities in the Arenas may be derived from attributes or such (but really, why bother).

A character's ability in an arena are broken down into three aspect:

Power-  a character's raw natural abilities in an arena
Practice- how honed a character's natural skills are.
Technique- the specific things a character has trained to do.



Power provides a character with his Bones

Practice provides a character's Max for that arena

Technique grants a number of specific special abilities.  Each Technique is tied to a Style




Bones-  the number of dice a character throws for a Bout in the Arena.  I use six siders because I have a big pile of them.  

Max- a die cap.  any die which shows a value greater then the Max is disguarded.

Style.  A Style is an element of color which describes a sub-set of an arena's combat.  Styles can be martial arts techniques, weapons, magical disciplines, social style etc.


Conflict


When characters engages in a Bout (a dramatic unit of conflict of no fixed timeframe) in a given Arena, everyone follows these steps:

1  Everyone rolls their Bones
3  Everyone declares their Style and slides one die up for Initiative.
4  In reverse order of highest initiative, everyone pushes out their Action dice.  At any time, a character who has not yet pushed an Action, can push a Counter.  If this die is greater or equal to an Action, they cancel each other out.  If the Counter is less than the Action, it still reduces it by it's value- partial defense instead of no defense.
5  Once everyone has pushed their Actions and Counters, another round of die-pushing begins.  A character who runs out of dice is SOL.
6  The results are


Each push of the dice demands description.


Complications

It's never that easy.

Techniques grant a characher all sorts of Tricks to use when pushin dice:

Shatter- divide a single die into two dice with half the rolled value (rounded down).

Lump- add two dice together into a single die of greater value

Round- reduce the value of die to equal Max so it won't be lost.

Raise- boost Max in specific circumstances.

Feint- swap a low value Action for a higher value die after an opoenet has pushed a counter.

Trump- Your style of conflict counters another style very well.  Trumped oponents don't benifit from their Techniques when going up againt you.

Block- you have a free Counter against all Actions of a certain style.  This begins at 1 and increases by 1 for each time Block is selected.


Each technique is tied to a specific Style.




Example

A setting of warring sorcerers.  The magic is powerful enough to level cities, so physical combat is pointles.  Only Magical and Social arenas need be messed with.

so...

Magical Arena
Mana-  A magician's natural magical ptency
Craft- how much skill a mage has using his magical power
Arcana- what kinds of spells and mystical techniques he knows


A mage's magical arena looks like this:

Mordan Shadowspinner

Mana- 8 (throws 8 dice)
Craft- 4 (has a Max of 4)
Arcana- 3 (knows 3 special techniques)

Techniques
Power of Darkness-  (Raise +2 max w/ Shadow magic)
Thousand Shadows-  (Shatter w/ shadow magic)
Cloak of Night-   (Lump w/ shadow magic)

Mordan has specialized in Shadow Magic.  When he cast spells based on darkness or shadow, he can add 2 to his Max, split dice, and add dice together.  He is a dangerous oponent.  However, if he tangles with Alphonse of the Golden Hair (a mage with heavy specialization in Light magic and a Trump and Block technique for Shadow magic), he might be in for some trouble.  Specialize at your own risk.




Conclusion


Will it work?  Does it make sense?  Are there any huge gaping flaws?

[Mike Holmes]

Is the initiative die hidden until all are selected? What number sided dice? What happens if two players are tied for initiative (this will pobably by a common situation)?

6 The results are


Each push of the dice demands description.

That seems to be missing something.

Mike

[Bailywolf]

Geep!

My fingers must have gone numb.



As for initiative... I don't know.  Yes?  It is one of those things I was toying with back and forth.

I've been thinking d6... but milage may vary.

And, as for ties... again, not sure.  I was thinking they could either resolve simultaneously, have a tiebreak trait of some sort, go even odd, or give them option of pushing another die.

What would you recomend?

[Valamir]

Clever.  Do you actually envision a "roleplaying" game with this as the mechanic, or more of a series of staged conflict resolutions such as implied by "arenas" and "bouts"?

How do settings get defined?  Are they established in advance or created on the fly?  Frex, when did it get decided that Alphonses Light magic trump Shadow; before character creation when the setting was defined...or during play to confront Mordon with a tailored opponent?

How do the techniques get chosen?  These rules would lend themselves very nicely to a very Gamist confrontational type of game, so perhaps point based purchaseing would be effective.

An idea for another technique "Secret Dice".  You can hide (under your hand) the value of the die pushed forward for Init and Attacks (or even seperate them "Secret Init", "Secret Attack".)

Thus "Cloak of Darkness" might better describe a "Secret Init" Technique

How about an assassin with
Critical Strike (Lump)
Backstab (Secret Attack)
Used in combo, somebody's feeling some pain.


Anyway, I'm envisioning a "Hero Quest", or "Dungeon", or "Dune" type game would work well with this.

BTW: please share the rules for effects.

[Bailywolf]

Clever.  Do you actually envision a "roleplaying" game with this as the mechanic, or more of a series of staged conflict resolutions such as implied by "arenas" and "bouts"?

Actualy an RPG.  I wanted to make the mechaincs very tactile- you shake a big handful of dice, shove them at your oponents, expostulate dramatic descriptions if you win...that sort of thing.  

This is only the conflict resolution mechanic...it could be the front-end of a detailed character creation system with the three aspects of a given arena being derived from character ability scores... or it can stand alone as a pure conflict system.

How do settings get defined?  Are they established in advance or created on the fly?  Frex, when did it get decided that Alphonses Light magic trump Shadow; before character creation when the setting was defined...or during play to confront Mordon with a tailored opponent?

Gotcha.  Like I said, this is just the conflic engine.  character creation, setting, local color ect... these things will typically be described before hand in the conventional way.  Alphonse had his techniques described when that character was created... but I personaly would be a little careful using a character who's powers so totaly bone one of the PC's.  I hate to make my players feel like I'm screwing them over.

How do the techniques get chosen?  These rules would lend themselves very nicely to a very Gamist confrontational type of game, so perhaps point based purchaseing would be effective.

Techniques are derived from the third arena trait.  For the magical example, Arcana determines the number of techniques a character has.  

As for actually creating a conflict-engine character... I toyed with a simple point-allocation system.  You get like 8 to 20 points to divide up between the three arena traits.  In settings using more than one arena, you might give players several fixed amounts to distribute (like in a Fantasy setting, everyone might have 12/8/6/4 if there were Fighting, Magic, Thievery, Survival... a mage has 12 in magic while a warrior has 12 in fighting ect).

Problem is, I have no idea how the odds on this system play out... so I don't know if I need to weight the cost of one trait over the other two... gotta monkey with the numbers some more...

anyone have any suggestions for determining the statistics on this beast?

An idea for another technique "Secret Dice".  You can hide (under your hand) the value of the die pushed forward for Init and Attacks (or even seperate them "Secret Init", "Secret Attack".)
(snip)

Oh yes!  I'd love to expand the list of Techniques... call this one...how about SNEAK?    

Anyway, I'm envisioning a "Hero Quest", or "Dungeon", or "Dune" type game would work well with this.

My thoughts exactly.  This system demands a lot of "traction" in a setting- it needs a dicey, conflict laced setting to make the conflict mechanics worth it.  I hadn't even thought of Dune... hmmmm... an awesome reference!  

Another one I was thinking about was a film noir, Bogey and Bacall kind of social dueling... each die push is a witty remark or clever comeback.

BTW: please share the rules for effects.

This one of those areas of major developement... several options present themselves.

The margine of success for a Push (the degree by which the Action beats the Counter, if any) can be used to track effect... read as a sort of damage.  

Another option is to simply consider a succeful Action either entirely successful or not at all... but this removes the possibility of partial Counters... a solution for this is Blind Bones- dice are Pushed- attacks and counters- then revealed.  

So you don't know how good an oponent's attack is before you choose to conter it or not...and with which die...

Now, should the result of Effects be to reduce Bones?  Lower Max?  I'm not sure.  





Also to consider, what of uncontested actions?  I'm thinking about a simple resolution here- roll your Bones and count the number below your Max.  

For complex uncontested actions (spells and whatnot), assign rolled dice to different aspects of the task-

Alphonse wants to summon a Light Elemental, so he throws his 7 Bones, keeping the 5 that don't excede his Max of 5....  so (2, 3, 4, 5, 5).  He assigns them to the elemental spell like this-

Duration 5 [he Lumps his 2 and 3].  
Summon[power:5, skill:5, technique:4]

He now has a fairly potent Light elemental which can enter conflicts with 5 Bones, 5 Max, and with 4 Techniques.  With the Durtaion of 5, it will stick around (oh, pulling this out of my ass) for weeks.

Something like that.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

I'm a bit strapped for time, so system and design thoughts will have to wait.

But I do want to say that one thing I've been really wanting to see is a Gamist RPG that is not based on the traditional late-70s dungeon-fantasy context.

We have tons of non- or almost-RPGs that do with, including Bedlam and the other games I mention in the Bedlam review. But I'm talking about a plain solid RPG - (1) Gamist to hell and back, (2) not in that dungeon-fantasy context.

I'll be back,
Best,
Ron

[Walt Freitag]

Okay, let's talk about the numbers. I'm concerned about the Max mechanism.

A a player's effectiveness in a round appears to depend mainly on the total rolled. That total depends linearly on Bones, but more or less geometrically on Max:

MAX  -- AVG. ROLL PER BONE

1 ---- 0.17
2 ---- 0.5
3 ---- 1.0
4 ---- 1.67
5 ---- 2.5
6 ---- 3.5

Starting at 1, an increase of 1 point of Max is comparable to, successively, tripling, doubling, 1.67x, 1.5x, and 1.4x the number of bones. Any player would be a fool not to max their Max, at a one for one cost in Bones, up to the point where they only have two or three bones left. Where most mechanisms like this have diminishing returns to encourage tradeoffs, this system has increasing returns for Max.

I think you had in mind here that going into Action phase with more dice (albeit with lower numbers) could be a useful tactic against fewer dice with higher numbers. But lowering Max to add a Bone actually gives you, after the roll, about the same or fewer dice with lower numbers, unless you have a rather small number of Bones. For example:

3 Bones, 6 Max: 3 usable rolls averaging 3.5
4 Bones, 5 Max: 3.33 usable rolls averaging 3.0
5 Bones, 4 Max: 3.33 usable rolls averaging 2.5
6 Bones, 3 Max: 3 usable rolls averaging 2.0
7 Bones, 2 Max: 2.33 usable rolls averaging 1.5
8 Bones, 1 Max: 1.33 usable rolls averaging 1.0

Consider converting all rolls over the Max to the Max, rather than discarding them entirely. (Minimizing your Max could then be interesting. Being the only one with dice left could be devastating, even though they were all 1s, but you'd have to survive long enough to use them, with only counters of 1 to defend yourself with.)

- Walt

[edited to respace the first table which had run together]

[Bailywolf]

Before the specific comments, let me just say that Walt is now among my personal pantheon of dieties.  Brilliant man, brilliant.

Okay, let's talk about the numbers. I'm concerned about the Max mechanism.

A a player's effectiveness in a round appears to depend mainly on the total rolled. That total depends linearly on Bones, but more or less geometrically on Max:

MAX  -- AVG. ROLL PER BONE

1 ---- 0.17
2 ---- 0.5
3 ---- 1.0
4 ---- 1.67
5 ---- 2.5
6 ---- 3.5

A perfect reference... mind if I crib from this for the rest of the developement?


(some snipping)

I think you had in mind here that going into Action phase with more dice (albeit with lower numbers) could be a useful tactic against fewer dice with higher numbers. But lowering Max to add a Bone actually gives you, after the roll, about the same or fewer dice with lower numbers, unless you have a rather small number of Bones. For example:

3 Bones, 6 Max: 3 usable rolls averaging 3.5
4 Bones, 5 Max: 3.33 usable rolls averaging 3.0
5 Bones, 4 Max: 3.33 usable rolls averaging 2.5
6 Bones, 3 Max: 3 usable rolls averaging 2.0
7 Bones, 2 Max: 2.33 usable rolls averaging 1.5
8 Bones, 1 Max: 1.33 usable rolls averaging 1.0

Whif!  The numbers do not lie... this makes Max what?  About 2.5 to 3 times more valuable than Bones across the spread?  

Any suggestions for moderating this?  Is it as simple as making Max three times more expensive than Bones?

Consider converting all rolls over the Max to the Max, rather than discarding them entirely. (Minimizing your Max could then be interesting. Being the only one with dice left could be devastating, even though they were all 1s, but you'd have to survive long enough to use them, with only counters of 1 to defend yourself with.)

In an earlier version, I did this... but thought that the round-down thing might make a better special ability... but considering the way the odds swerve... perhaps I must reconsider.



Again, massive thanks.  Numbers and I have a certain understanding.  I trust them to keep the universe ticking over properly, and I don't bring up all those embarasing singularities and black holes.

[Bailywolf]

Hi there,
But I do want to say that one thing I've been really wanting to see is a Gamist RPG that is not based on the traditional late-70s dungeon-fantasy context.

We have tons of non- or almost-RPGs that do with, including Bedlam and the other games I mention in the Bedlam review. But I'm talking about a plain solid RPG - (1) Gamist to hell and back, (2) not in that dungeon-fantasy context.

Any suggestions?  I've been toying with a pulp-kungfu-madscience-occult kinda thing... My Burning Crane Style will defeat your Burrowing Drill Suit, doctor Vorotolunda!

[Bailywolf]

OH OH!  I just came up with a good mook-rule:


Mobs

Some npc's too pathetic to consider individualy.  Mobs are treated as a single character for the purposes of conflicting with.  

A Mob has Bones equal to it's number of members, modified as follows:

Power
Pathetic  (1 Bone per 5 Members)
Average  (1 Bone per Member)
Tough  (3 Bones per Member)

Skill
Inferior (Max 2)
Typical (Max 3)
Trained (Max 4)

Most Mobs won't have Techniques, but some may.  Points may be subtracted from Bones to add to Technique.


So... in a Kung Fu setting (Chi/Skill/Technique) with a primarily martial theme, two mobs from oposite ends of the scale:

Angry Peasants
(Pathetic/Inferior- 30 members)
Chi  4
Skill 2
Technique (none)


The Demon Three- brother assassins
(Tough/Trained- 3 members)
Chi  7
Skill 4
Technique  2

Unseen Sword (feint w/sword)
Three Brother Strike (lump w/sword)

[Bankuei]

Yes...this is what I want...
I don't know if I ever showed you my ideas on Battle Fantasy, but its got similar ideas in the total gamist dept.  I'm loving this.  :)

Chris

[Walt Freitag]

Any suggestions for moderating this? Is it as simple as making Max three times more expensive than Bones?

Not quite that simple, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't work. Turning Bones into Max subtracts from the number of Bones, but multiplies the average roll of the remaining bones by a factor of anywhere from 3 down to 1.4. At smaller number of Bones the effect of subtraction overshadows the multiplication, especially because fewer Bones means higher Max where the multiplier is at the low end of the range. But at higher number of Bones (especially at lower Max), the effect of the multiplication overshadows the effect of the subtraction. So the numbers will always be driving you fairly hard toward a fairly clear optimum, regardless of what the Max to Bones cost ratio is. The optimum shifts up and down the Max scale depending on that cost ratio and also on how many total points are involved.

For example, suppose 1 Max costs 2 Bones and you have 4 Bones at a Max of 4. If you subtract two Bones (reducing your Bones by half) to increase the Max by 1 and thereby the average roll per Bone by 1.5 (the multiplier for Max 4 to Max 5), you're losing out.

But if you start with 6 Bones at Max 4, you break even by converting 2 Bones into one Max. And if you start with 8 Bones at Max 4, you end up way ahead increasing your Max by 1.

The end result of this is, Max and Bones are not really independent. For any given number of total points allocated to Max and Bones, and for any given Bones to Max cost ratio, there are one or two "correct" Max levels unless the player is willing to live with a disadvantage.

However... that's reckoning without Techniques. Techniques could compensate for this somewhat. For example a Technique that increases the benefit of higher numbers rolled would encourage higher than "optimum" Max, while a Technique that adds value to over-Max die rolls would encourage lower than "optimum" Max. In some cases, once the Technique is taken into account, including the cost of the Technique itself, an optimum might still be there, just shifted. But some Techniques, like one that converted your over-Max die rolls into rolls equal to your Max, might alter the whole curve and restore the independence of Bones and Max. What would be even better would be if a player's choice of Technique affected the benefit yielded by other players' Techniques, so no one player could sit down and optimize without knowing what the other players had.

- Walt

[Bailywolf]

(much tasty content sniped and digested)

However... that's reckoning without Techniques. Techniques could compensate for this somewhat. For example a Technique that increases the benefit of higher numbers rolled would encourage higher than "optimum" Max, while a Technique that adds value to over-Max die rolls would encourage lower than "optimum" Max. In some cases, once the Technique is taken into account, including the cost of the Technique itself, an optimum might still be there, just shifted. But some Techniques, like one that converted your over-Max die rolls into rolls equal to your Max, might alter the whole curve and restore the independence of Bones and Max. What would be even better would be if a player's choice of Technique affected the benefit yielded by other players' Techniques, so no one player could sit down and optimize without knowing what the other players had.

- Walt

Damn He's good!  


This I have to work in there.  There are techniques for all those things you mentioned...some raise Max, others allow you to round down over-rolls etc.  But each Technique needs a counter... and anti-technique which can cancel or reverse it's effects... it makes knowing one's enemy VERY importiant... I could see victory in one Arena (social, say) revealing an opoenent's Techniques in another (Martial...) .  A clever spy could talk his enemy into revealing his secrets...  yes...

[Valamir]

"I see you are useing Bennini's defense against me"
"I thought it fitting given the terrain"
"Then you must expect me to attack with cappa farro"
"I find Tybault cancels out cappa farro"
"Unless your opponent has studied his Agrippa...which I have"

Techniques, counters, anti counter, counter anti counters...

With a little noodling, your system could be made to do this.

Schweet

[Bailywolf]

OK...

Kenway lit a fire under my ass with a great PM...so...

I'm going to riff on setting a bit...

In response to Ron's challange (1- gamest as hell' 2- non-dundeon/fantasy) let me try this...

SteamJam

The Time:  a 1965 that never was.  The power of steam never faltered- enormous Babbages the size of sky-scrapers and powered by rivers grind away in a belt-driven information revolution.  Outogyroes, huge passenger ornothopters, and Power Zeplins all ply the skies.  Enormous sleek road-engines cruize the highways.  It's an Art Deco paradise...but man has been up to his old tricks.  The two world wars were fought- only with enormous Land Fortresses and Mole Machines.  

The Place:  The Far East.  Tokyo- city of the future.  Surounded by huge wind-farms driving vast belt-networks...Tokyo is a center of industry in a nation bursting with frenzied invention and expansion.  Hong Kong- mysterious, energetic, complex.  The British Empire still hold sway here, but more ancient orders than the monarchy of England secretly pull the strings.  Martial art schools, tongs, and the colonial government all secretyl serve The Unseen Dragon.

The Conflict:  it is a time of strife- War in Vietnam, the growth of communism, threat of destruction from the hundreds of Intracontinental Burrowing Magma Torpedoes (IBMT's) the Soviets and US have aimed at each other.  The ancient occult and martial traditions run head on into the frenzied inventions of master mind criminals, the biological horrors created by Deep Magma Energy releases cause by the first BMT tests in the 50's.  Tradition vs Revolution with a Jazy soundtrack.

The Characters:   Players take on the rolls of exciting, over the top masters of their chosen fields.  The world's most unorthodox and brilliant inventors...the world's greatest living martial artists...on of the few remaining masters of the Eldrich Arts... or Agents Exrtaordinaire foiling dasterdly plots every week, falling into bed with beautiful people, surviving certain death, and looking damn cool going it- In like Flint baby.

Characters all have abilities in at least three Arenas (Social, Martial, Practical) and can select an additional one (Magical, Inovative, Political, Investigative, or Espionage) or boost one of the basic three.  

The Hook:  Everyone works for BOOK.  BOOK is an international, multifaceted outfit with jurisdiction globaly to deal with Paranormal, Astrobiological, Psychocultish, or Frakenscience emergency.  BOOK has numerous sub-divisions related to specific missions.  BLACK BOOK deals with covert operations; BLUE BOOK with Exospatial threats; GREEN BOOK with Aberent Biology; RED BOOK with political crisis; GREY BOOK with mad science... and so on.  

So, is your Kung Fu powerful enough to save the world?

The Influences:   The Avengers; The Man From UNCLE; The Saint; Steam Detectives; Gate Keepers; The Flint Movies; Castle Falkenstien; BIG O; Cowboy Beebop.  Every Kung Fu Actino Theater I ever saw before the age of 12...the ones with bell bottoms and that great "swish swish" sound when they kicked; Captian Scarlet; Thunderbirds... oh, my brains hurt!



Mad!  They all said I was mad at university!  but my Lightning Cannon will show them who's realy mad! Haaaaaaahahahahahahaha!