The Stakes

[Bankuei]

Here's some gamist mechanics for the hell of it.  I'm not sure what I'd use this for, but feel free to comment

Characters are defined by skills and traits.  A skill is a general field of study, defined Over the Edge style, such as Fighter Pilot 3, Kung Fu master 2, etc.  A trait is any emotional trait or relationship tie, such as Short Tempered +3, Loves Sharon +2, etc.

Conflict resolution is as thus:

Roll as many 6 sided dice as you have Skill(min 1)+any and all traits that apply.

Each die 1-3 is a success.  If you have matches on the dice(whether successful numbers or not), you can multiply your successes.  Only the highest amount of matches count.  For example:  John rolls 6 dice, getting 1,2,3, 5,5,5.   There are  3 successes X 3 matches for a total of 9 successes.

You're rolling against the GM's Pool which may be based on difficulty or another character.  

The highest successes wins.

BUT....

If you want to, you can choose to do 1 of 3 things; Raise the Stakes, Take Complication Dice , or else Boost your roll.

Raising the Stakes

If you raise, you choose a number of extra dice, up to your initial roll, to be  rolled and added on both sides.  For example, if John wanted to raise the stakes, he could raise it up to another 6 dice.  

Frex:  John decides to raise the stakes by 3 dice, getting a 1, 4, and a 5.  Combined with his previous roll, that makes: 1,1,2,3,4,5,5,5,5.  This is 4 successes X 4 matches for a nasty 16 successes.  The GM also rolls an extra 4 dice.

Raising the Stakes makes it possible for you to win a losing or tied conflict, but also increases the amount by which you could win or lose.  As you can see, this really increases the randomness of success/failure and the margin by which it happens.

Taking Complication Dice

If you take complication dice, you choose an additional number of dice that the GM rolls to add to the initial challenge roll.   For each die that you take in complication, you get 1 Hero Die(to either Boost, see below, or use as experience).

Boosting your roll

If you have any Hero dice, you can use them to boost your roll.  Other players can also spend theirs as well to boost your roll.

If you have done any of the above, recalculate any totals that may have changed.  On a simple contest, highest wins and acheives their goal.

Extended Contests
Every PC gets 10 fate points, mooks less, other characters as the GM sees fit.  Highest wins right?  Subtract the loser's successes, and however many you got leftover you can take away or add to any character's Fate who was involved in the contest.  If you push any character into 0 Fate, they no longer can participate this scene, and you get to narrate their Fate, according to the nature of the contest(death, capture, financial ruin, socially outcast, etc.)

Frex: John got 9 successes, the GM got 3.  John can add or subtract 6 Fate to any character who participated in the Contest.

What about multiple contestants?

Raises: Only the highest Raise counts, and it affects everyone(players, use teamwork!)
Complications:  Again, the GM gets the bonus, but also every PC gets the Hero dice(this can stack on top of Raises, be careful!)
Boosts: No real change there.

The GM rolls once, but each player's roll is resolved against the single roll.

Frex:  John got 9, Kim got 3, and the GM got 6.   John can add/subtract 3 Fate, from his success against the GM.  Likewise, the GM got 3 against Kim, and can add/subtract Fate.

The only limitation:  The GM can only subtract Fate from the contestants who lost.  The GM could either add 3 to any of the NPC's who participated, or subtract 3 from Kim.

Things I like:
I like the Raising the stakes factor just for the gamist goodness of it all.  I like the taking complications to get Hero dice.  I like the randomness that the match/multiply system creates.  I like that Traits stack, making it very possible for a motivated character to outdo a skilled one.

Things I don't like:
Handling time seems a little snaggy.  I tried rolling a whole lot of dice, and it didn't take terribly long, but that might just be my math inclined mind.  I could see people not getting the idea of Raising, Taking Complications, or Boosting.  Multiple folks could get nasty in terms of dealing with Raising, etc.

Whatcha'll think?

Chris

[Walt Freitag]

Hi Chris,

There doesn't seem to be any difference between Raising the Stakes, and Talking Complication Dice which are then used to Boost.

When you say that Complication Dice can be used as experience, I assume you mean that they become Hero Dice that you can then use to Boost a later roll. But (if I'm interpreting that correctly), what are the constraints on this? As a player in a gamist frame of mind, it sounds like I should be trying to perform as many easy actions as possible, for which I can give up Complication Dice, so that I can collect lots of Hero Dice to use later when trying to do something difficult (or for whatever else you mean when you say "used for experience.") Making easy actions valuable in this way could lead to some friction:

PLAYER: I spin-kick the paper wall.

GM: Okay, you succeed. There's now a puncture five feet up in the wall.

PLAYER: No, I want to roll for it.

GM: You can't. It's too easy. Automatic success.

PLAYER: OK, I'll do it with my eyes closed. Does that make it hard enough for a roll?

GM: You have no reason to want to do that.

PLAYER: Are you telling me how to play my character?

The matching-numbers multiplier mechanic is interesting, but it makes probability calculations really difficult. I'm going to have to write a computer program to grind through all the possible rolls in order to figure out even basic things like how much a 1-die advantage affects the odds of success as the number of dice go up. Because there are only six possible numbers to roll, the matching multiplier is going to go up quickly, and the behavior might be strange. It might, for example, work out so that a 1-die advantage makes victory more and more likely as the number of dice involved go up. This would make it to the player's advantage to automatically Raise whenever he has more dice than the GM. (I'm not saying that's necessarily, or even likely, the case, but it's the kind of thing to watch out for.)

- Walt

[Bankuei]

>There doesn't seem to be any difference between Raising the Stakes, and Talking Complication Dice which are then used to Boost.

I forgot to put:  You cannot Boost with the Complication dice for the same conflict.  You can save those dice for other ones, but not that same one.  It's basically banking dice for later use.

As far as the first point, yes, technically you can have idiot people do stupid stuff as far as they want in any game, but I'm not going to make idiot proof rules(anyone who can, needs to be making commandments and religions :P).

The basic idea behind complication dice comes from about 3 weeks of Donjon, were many times people have used their successes to make situations worse rather than better, simply for the challenge.  I really like the idea of players being able to have a better grasp on the difficulty they want to handle.  Sure you can beat the supermacho bad guy for an ultimate anticlimatic ending.  Try it a few times, you'll get bored.  

The character creation rules and experience rules are pretty basic, skills and traits are player defined, and lifted straight from the Pool/TQB, you start with 16 dice, and to buy any trait or skill, its what you want it to be, squared.  As you can see, if you don't take any complications, you don't get any experience.  

As far as the math, I really can't give exact numbers, but I do know that as you get more dice, it gets more nasty real quick.  On a basic view of dice, just looking at the max successes you can get:
1 die=1 success
2 dice= 4 successes
3 dice = 9 successes
etc, etc.  

Now of course the odds of getting the max decreases as you go up, but it doesn't take much to figure that the odds of matching increases as well as the basic successes.  I've found that the only time it's worth Raising the stakes is when you're losing and you "think" you might be able to succeed.   Of course, this is just me rolling dice, but I'm sure your program will probably show the full scale of the math(and if you do, you'll earn plenty thanks from me :)...)

Chris

Edited cause I forgot about taking complications ... :P

[Walt Freitag]

Hi Chris,

Your instincts and experiments have proven correct. Although the distributions of numbers of successes (counting the multiplier) are complex, overall the system is rather well behaved. The advantage of a given dice differential remains fairly consistent as dice are added, at least up to 10 dice that I've been able to calculate so far.

The one weakness here might be the rate of ties, which remains stubbornly high even for larger numbers of dice. This is probably due to certain "attractor" results, such as 12, that can arise from many different combinations of base successes and multiplier. Note that the mode, the most frequent single outcome, remains at 12 from eight dice to ten even while the mean and median change markedly. However, since your system makes the resolution of ties interesting, getting lots of them might not be a drawback.

Here are the numbers:

1. Individual Die Rolls

1 die:
mean: 0.5000
median: 0.5
mode: 0.5 (equally distributed between 0 and 1)
exact distribution (out of 6 possibilities) :
[0: 3, 1: 3]

2 dice:
mean: 1.1667
median: 1
mode: 1
exact distribution (out of 36 possibilities) :
[0: 9, 1: 18, 2: 6, 4: 3]

3 dice:
mean: 2.2083
median: 2
mode: 2
exact distribution (out of 216 possibilities) :
[0: 27, 1: 54, 2: 81, 3: 6, 4: 27, 6: 18, 9: 3]

4 dice:
mean: 3.6481
median: 3
mode: 2
exact distribution (out of 1296 possibilities) :
[0: 81, 1: 72, 2: 432, 3: 108, 4: 270, 6: 216, 8: 54, 9: 36, 12: 24, 16: 3]

5 dice:
mean: 5.3530
median: 4
mode: 6
exact distribution (out of 7776 possibilities) :
[0: 243, 2: 1170, 3: 720, 4: 1845, 6: 2070, 8: 810, 9: 270, 10: 90, 12: 360, 15: 120, 16: 45, 20: 30, 25: 3]

6 dice:
mean: 7.2245
median: 6
mode: 6
exact distribution (out of 46656 possibilities) :
[0: 729, 2: 1620, 3: 2880, 4: 7830, 5: 54, 6: 14040, 8: 7695, 9: 3060, 10: 1620, 12: 3330, 15: 2160, 16: 405, 18: 420, 20: 540, 24: 180, 25: 54, 30: 36, 36: 3]

7 dice:
mean: 9.3083
median: 8
mode: 6
exact distribution (out of 279936 possibilities) :
[0: 2187, 2: 1890, 3: 8820, 4: 20790, 5: 756, 6: 68103, 8: 51030, 9: 28350, 10: 17577, 12: 33075, 15: 22680, 16: 2835, 18: 8820, 20: 5670, 21: 1050, 24: 3780, 25: 567, 28: 840, 30: 756, 35: 252, 36: 63, 42: 42, 49: 3]

8 dice:
mean: 11.6848
median: 10
mode: 12
exact distribution (out of 1679616 possibilities) :
[0: 6561, 3: 25200, 4: 42840, 5: 6048, 6: 227808, 7: 72, 8: 249480, 9: 196560, 10: 130032, 12: 290556, 15: 201096, 16: 33390, 18: 105840, 20: 45360, 21: 25200, 24: 47040, 25: 4536, 28: 20160, 30: 9072, 32: 3150, 35: 6048, 36: 756, 40: 1344, 42: 1008, 48: 336, 49: 72, 56: 48, 64: 3]

9 dice:
mean: 14.3441
median: 12
mode: 12
exact distribution (out of 10077696 possibilities) :
[0: 19683, 3: 45360, 4: 85050, 5: 36288, 6: 530712, 7: 1296, 8: 884601, 9: 975240, 10: 694008, 12: 2054808, 14: 972, 15: 1533168, 16: 385560, 18: 982044, 20: 416178, 21: 340200, 24: 453600, 25: 30618, 27: 1680, 28: 272160, 30: 81648, 32: 85050, 35: 81648, 36: 16254, 40: 36288, 42: 13608, 45: 6048, 48: 9072, 49: 972, 54: 2016, 56: 1296, 63: 432, 64: 81, 72: 54, 81: 3]

10 dice:
mean: 17.2237
median: 15
mode: 12
exact distribution (out of 60466176 possibilities) :
[0: 59049, 3: 50400, 4: 283500, 5: 181440, 6: 740880, 7: 12960, 8: 2297970, 9: 3402090, 10: 2585520, 12: 11211480, 14: 19440, 15: 9888480, 16: 3384315, 18: 7469280, 20: 4014360, 21: 3411720, 24: 4114530, 25: 365148, 27: 50400, 28: 2721600, 30: 612360, 32: 1275750, 35: 816480, 36: 334530, 40: 566370, 42: 136080, 45: 181440, 48: 136080, 49: 9720, 50: 23436, 54: 60480, 56: 19440, 60: 10080, 63: 12960, 64: 1215, 70: 2880, 72: 1620, 80: 540, 81: 90, 90: 60, 100: 3]

2. Outcomes (%)

1 die:
versus 1 die:  wins 25.0000  loses 25.0000  ties 50.0000

2 dice:
versus 2 dice:  wins 32.6389  loses 32.6389  ties 34.7222
versus 1 die:  wins 50.0000  loses 12.5000  ties 37.5000

3 dice:
versus 3 dice:  wins 37.8858  loses 37.8858  ties 24.2284
versus 2 dice:  wins 58.1019  loses 18.9815  ties 22.9167
versus 1 die:  wins 75.0000  loses 6.2500  ties 18.7500

4 dice:
versus 4 dice:  wins 40.0458  loses 40.0458  ties 19.9085
versus 3 dice:  wins 59.6258  loses 21.4410  ties 18.9333
versus 2 dice:  wins 78.8194  loses 9.5486  ties 11.6319
versus 1 die:  wins 90.9722  loses 3.1250  ties 5.9028

5 dice:
versus 5 dice:  wins 41.3015  loses 41.3015  ties 17.3970
versus 4 dice:  wins 59.4111  loses 24.6092  ties 15.9797
versus 3 dice:  wins 77.1026  loses 11.3747  ties 11.5226
versus 2 dice:  wins 90.3646  loses 4.3692  ties 5.2662
versus 1 die:  wins 96.8750  loses 1.5625  ties 1.5625

6 dice:
versus 6 dice:  wins 41.7882  loses 41.7882  ties 16.4237
versus 5 dice:  wins 57.7128  loses 26.7544  ties 15.5329
versus 4 dice:  wins 74.3768  loses 14.3384  ties 11.2848
versus 3 dice:  wins 87.7376  loses 5.8969  ties 6.3655
versus 2 dice:  wins 95.6565  loses 1.9756  ties 2.3679
versus 1 die:  wins 98.4375  loses 0.7812  ties 0.7812

7 dice:
versus 7 dice:  wins 43.2258  loses 43.2258  ties 13.5484
versus 6 dice:  wins 57.2925  loses 28.7363  ties 13.9712
versus 5 dice:  wins 71.7259  loses 16.6091  ties 11.6650
versus 4 dice:  wins 84.5829  loses 8.0167  ties 7.4004
versus 3 dice:  wins 93.5734  loses 2.8919  ties 3.5347
versus 2 dice:  wins 98.1685  loses 0.9048  ties 0.9267
versus 1 die:  wins 99.2188  loses 0.3906  ties 0.3906

8 dice:
versus 8 dice:  wins 44.4193  loses 44.4193  ties 11.1614
versus 7 dice:  wins 58.1741  loses 30.5700  ties 11.2560
versus 6 dice:  wins 71.3572  loses 18.6422  ties 10.0006
versus 5 dice:  wins 82.7957  loses 9.7866  ties 7.4177
versus 4 dice:  wins 91.5579  loses 4.2319  ties 4.2102
versus 3 dice:  wins 96.9450  loses 1.3529  ties 1.7021
versus 2 dice:  wins 99.2718  loses 0.4180  ties 0.3102
versus 1 die:  wins 99.6094  loses 0.1953  ties 0.1953

9 dice:
versus 9 dice:  wins 44.6898  loses 44.6898  ties 10.6203
versus 8 dice:  wins 58.2674  loses 31.6490  ties 10.0836
versus 7 dice:  wins 71.3305  loses 20.1402  ties 8.5293
versus 6 dice:  wins 82.2996  loses 11.2746  ties 6.4259
versus 5 dice:  wins 90.4549  loses 5.3482  ties 4.1969
versus 4 dice:  wins 95.8431  loses 2.0327  ties 2.1242
versus 3 dice:  wins 98.7011  loses 0.5832  ties 0.7157
versus 2 dice:  wins 99.6969  loses 0.1840  ties 0.1192
versus 1 die:  wins 99.8047  loses 0.0977  ties 0.0977

10 dice:
versus 10 dice:  wins 44.9355  loses 44.9355  ties 10.1291
versus 9 dice:  wins 57.6976  loses 32.4370  ties 9.8654
versus 8 dice:  wins 70.3817  loses 21.3026  ties 8.3157
versus 7 dice:  wins 81.3623  loses 12.5416  ties 6.0961
versus 6 dice:  wins 89.6023  loses 6.4541  ties 3.9436
versus 5 dice:  wins 94.9895  loses 2.7526  ties 2.2579
versus 4 dice:  wins 98.1017  loses 0.9124  ties 0.9859
versus 3 dice:  wins 99.4978  loses 0.2488  ties 0.2534
versus 2 dice:  wins 99.8563  loses 0.0802  ties 0.0635
versus 1 die:  wins 99.9023  loses 0.0488  ties 0.0488

To go beyond 10 dice I'd need to either use a faster programming environment, tie up my computer for hours or days at a time, or use a less dumb-brute-force method to calculate the distributions. I've figured out how to do the latter, but I may or may not have time to do it.

- Walt

[Bankuei]

You da man!  Armed with this, I can better judge how many dice I want to have players working with.  

If you're interested in what I'm planning to use this for, I've got a setting I'm writing up, called Redline.  This is basically a hyperpunk racing/gang warfare thing.  Take Fast and the Furious, Battle Angel Alita, Jet Set Radio, the bike scenes from Akira, Kinetica, and cyberpunk, and roll it into a fierce battle for the streets.

Thanks for the gross math.  Maybe I'll get a chance to test it out soon.

PS-
Something the math can't cover is the gambling/gamist personality in that with your initial roll, you have a fuzzy estimate as to whether to gamble more or not.  If I have a 1,2,3, 5,5, I know that I'm likely to at least double my successes with room to triple them.  Likewise, I'm also looking at what the GM rolled and betting my odds against that.  In a way, you know what you got, and you're trying to do the math in your head as to what the best option is going to be.


Chris

[Walt Freitag]

Likewise, I'm also looking at what the GM rolled and betting my odds against that. In a way, you know what you got, and you're trying to do the math in your head as to what the best option is going to be.

Yes, I like that element very much, though more for the drama of it than for the math :). You might want to consider increasing the poker analogy even more. (This is gamistic but it is also well-applicable to simulationistic and narrativistic thought. Raising, folding, showing, and bluffing are fundamental aspects of how we deal with the world, especially with other people, and are highly dramatic.) Some ways you could do this:

- A raise doesn't have to be accepted; the other party can fold. If the winner raised, a fold on the loser's part leaves the winner's original success intact but no worse for the loser; if the loser raised, a fold on the winner's part reverses the success to a near-draw.

- Some mechanisms (hero dice, perhaps) could involve picking up and rerolling dice already rolled rather than rolling additional ones.

- Some dice in the original roll could be initially hidden from the other party and revealed in stages, with options at each stage to fold (accept the result showing so far), raise (roll more dice), or see (reveal more dice). This would be good for narrated resolution of extended actions like fights, while still being fundamentally gamistic. Whoever gained more successes gets to narrate the effect of the round, and the other has to decide his response:

GM: "The Chromed Invader* punches you in the nose again! It's bleeding like a gusher now. Are you sure you want to keep going with this?"

PC: "I give up." (to fold). Or: "Just shut up and fight." (to see). Or: "Enough playing around, I draw my knife." (to raise).

- Walt

*Y'know, the Circuit's lined and jammed with them. Apologies to Springsteen. Love your setting too.

[Bankuei]

I definitely had ideas along this line, but wasn't sure how complicated I wanted it to get.  Being able to raise the stakes, take a higher difficulty, or "lower" it with hero dice is a lot of control for a gamist game anyway.  I think the tricky mechanics are "complex" enough for new folks.

Here's a quick glimpse into the background:

Redline(slang)
1) pushing your ride's performance to the limit
2) An illegal race
3) Human remains after hitting the concrete at 90 mph

The hyperpunk world of Redline is the end result of the ultraconsumer world of cyberpunk; Humanity at 0 humanity(to use Sorcerer terms).  No one cares about anyone, even themselves.  Imagine a world of people with the mind state of suicide bombers, running rampant, because you CANNOT threaten them, you cannot intimidate them.  They are beyond fear, amoral, and pissed.  The machine is going down in flames, the Man is eaten alive by his slaves, and all hell is running from the shit that's breaking loose up here.

"Strap in, peel out.  Play chicken with a semi, lose, then crawl out and shoot the tank." That's hyperpunk.

I guess the premise is, "What would you do if you didn't care about consequences and how far would you go?"

Chris

[Valamir]

Why do I hear that deep voice of that movie trailer voice over guy going:

"In a world, gone mad..."