Developing a Dice mechanic

[F. Scott Banks]

Every time I log on I wish someone had told me that no one here uses "Handles"...

Oh well, on to game making.

I'm once again asking for help in developing a dice mechanic.  This is something I'm notoriously bad at.  When I originally created the game "Outatowners", I created a simple dice system pretty much because I thought I had to.  When actors encountered boogums, spooks, or monsters, they would take basic combat rolls (the standard "big-roll-beats-little-roll" system).

The problem I had with this system is that it's ungainly, turning a game that's supposed to emphasize storytelling and suspense into a basic dungeon-crawl.  Also, it doesn't leave much room for inventive storytelling or interesting monsters.

I'm trying to create a very rules-light system.  Coming from a programming background, this is pretty much an exercise in futility without someone holding me down and keeping me from making charts and tables.

The gameplay is designed to be cruelly simple...unfortunately, I cannot make it so.

A GM creates a story surrounding an appropriately spooky location such as an old house, abandoned insane assylum, or civil war battlefield.  The location is haunted by two creatures, a ghost that "anchors" the haunting (murdered child, shut-in who died alone, warden killed and eaten by his inmates, etc.) and the "monsters" created by the ghost (toys posessed with an evil will, faceless figures dressed as nurses, insane jibbering horrors formed by no ordered mind).

The monsters serve as "clues" to the nature of and a possible way of exorcising the ghost (the ghost isn't neccessarily evil...the monsters are primarily embodiments of it's frustration at being misunderstood).  They also obviously serve as...well...monsters for GMs and players who absolutely must kill things.

Other encounters involve "scares".  Everything from a creaky door to shadows murdering each other in an endless, grisly tableau on the walls can be a "scare".  The character is not attacked or in mortal peril, but failing to win an encounter such as this would have certian unpleasant outcomes such as hiding in a corner until someone gets them, or wetting themselves.  "Scares" can also serve as clues.

So the GM gives out clues to his scenario according to the players actions and the players try to figure out the scenario before they are reduced to sobbing heaps of flesh (or just heaps of flesh).

So that's the basic flow of gameplay.  My problem is that I can't create a mechanic to resolve encounters.  But for this, the game is finished and I could go on to bug people about which printer to use and what binding works best for the number of pages I'm working with.

[Josh Roby]

So the GM gives out clues to his scenario according to the players actions and the players try to figure out the scenario before their characters are reduced to sobbing heaps of flesh (or just heaps of flesh).

Bolded change mine.

So are the players or the characters trying to figure out who/what the ghost is?

It seems the players have a finite resource of Health+Sanity that they risk in each of their character's encounters.  "Winning" said encounter only reduces  (perhaps to 0) the amount of Health+Sanity that they lose; merely being in the encounter reveals another clue for the players (or characters?) to munch on.  Is that accurate, or can the players make a decision in a certain way that reveals more information?

How do you resolve each situation / location?  Is it a matter of the players annoucing, "Oh, it's a drowned child!" or do the players have to do that and get their characters to bring the child's dolly up from the bottom of the lake, thereby exorcising it?  If the latter, they need to conserve their Health+Sanity to both figure things out and flip switch/push button/what-have-you.

Oh, and are characters reused through many locations, or do they have one supernatural experience, and then new characters are made for the next game?

[F. Scott Banks]

Resolution occurs when the spirit/location is exorscised.  The ghost is trying to communicate with the world of the living and the players are trying to figure out the mystery of the location as well as get out alive and sane.  Resolution is up to the GM, but ideally would require a certian task be carried out.

Encounters are clues, or should be.  Monsters that happen to be faceless schoolchildren holding knives might give some insight as to the ghost.  Perhaps he was killed by his classmates...perhaps he was running with a knife and fell down a boarded-up stairwell never to be found.  Resolution in a case like this might be finding the body, apologising to the spirit, or just calling the roll one last time.  It's a "storytelling" RPG (Ron told me why it's not narrative but I've never been known for my grasp of G/N/S) so the GM would determine the best/most dramatic/scariest resolution.

Characters could carry over from story to story, but that would depend on the GM's ability (and willingness) to keep his audience alive.  As a storyteller, I'm not much concerned with continuity of characters between stories.  For me, a great ending would be one where the last surviving player realizes the horrible truth about the haunted Oreo Cookie Factory.

People...double stuff is made from people.

[Aldoth]

With something that is a story heavy game the lighter the system the better. Look at what you want the system to do. Eg drive the characters mad. Scare the S@#t out of them. I would look at a bravery/sanity mechanic. Fighting monsters doesn't seem like the most important part you can have a simple mechanic for such things. I roll and hit or miss but the tougher the monsters the harder to hurt the scarier they are. Players are generally afraid of character death. so they have to be smart so intelligence or intellect has to be key.


Link the intellect to the bravery so the more cowardly they get the less they notice. Then you can have some sort of epiphany mechanic where things become clear.

That is just my 2 cents tho.

Simpler is good in this type of game especially if I am going to be playing a separate character each time we go on an (adventure) I don't want to spend a crap load of time to create a character that I may never play again.

The more time i can spend with a character as a player the more I will forgive the mechanic. (to a point) I think that a simple idea like Fright (SAN) checks is the way to go.

[joepub]

I'm wondering if maybe intellect is a bad stat to have.

The reason I'm thinking that is this: The players themselves are solving the mystery at the same time that the characters are. As such, it doesn't make much sense to me, personally, to have players test to see how much of the puzzle they piece together, while the player also tries to piece it together.

Some things I think the character might depend on:
awareness
bravery
sanity

empathy/remorse.

I think the empathy one might be key. It's easy enough to kill the faceless nurse phantoms when you learn how, it's a lot harder to cope with them - if you empathize with the ghost who creates them.

I think that this coming to understand, maybe even pity and feel for, the ghost could be a huge part of the game.
If you agree - I'd like to see a "remorse" stat.

[F. Scott Banks]

The empathy one is new...hadn't considered players becoming emotionally involved (unless fear is an emotion) with the creatures stalking them.  The urge to soothe the pain of a troubled spirit and being unable to strike down it's emmisaries because of the pain it causes the creature is interesting.

It also creates the one player who "understands" the ghost and who becomes valuable to the party as an empath but useless as a fighter.  Also, messages from the spirit won't be as violent (like bleeding walls and screaming teddy bears) because the spirit won't have to try as hard to communicate.

Downside...that character won't go where the spirit won't go, or where the spirit doesn't want them to go.  While the other characters can take their two-by-fours into the abandoned toolshed and grab the rusty sawblade, the character who has bonded with the spirit can't (or can't without passing a fear check) because that's where the spirit died and it's afraid to go there.

So now different areas are dangerous to different players.  The ghost won't protect the empath in the dark hallway because it has no presence there.  This is the free reign of his monsters...or monsters that embody it's own fears.  Instead of drowned people, the empath would have to face the ghostly murderer of the child.

Okay...I'm skipping ahead to gameplay and ignoring mechanic...that is my downfall time and again.

Health - Because things can kill you
Sanity - Because things can drive you nuts
Awareness - Because clues are all around you
Bravery - Because other things are all around you
Empathy - Because there's two sides to every story

Hmm...now these characters are interesting enough to carry on to multiple games.

And...the mechanic is also starting to form.  Health and Sanity are pools, depleted when a player fails a task.  Awareness is the player's ability to get clues out of encounters.  Bravery is a player's resistance to scares.  Empathy is a players...alignment for lack of a better word.  The more a player feels for the ghost, the harder it is for that player to ignore the spirit's wishes.  The player is protected to some degree, but is now as trapped in the location as the spirit.  That player cannot leave without a resolution.

Empathy conveniently solves the "Why don't we just get the hell out of here" dilemma in so many horror movies.

So how should I roll those last three.  The first three are just pools and can be set to a respectable number like 6 or 12.  Playtesting will dictate that though.

[Josh Roby]

a) "Story Heavy" does not equate to "System Lite".  Don't make me come over there.

b) I'd apply Joe's argument against Intelligence to your proposed Awareness and Empathy traits -- you want the players to figure things out; why don't you want the players to notice things and form a connection to the ghost?

c) Stop looking at the character sheet as a description of a character; start looking at is as a listing of resources available to the player.  Health and Sanity are a dwindling resource that lets the player keep participating, keep finding more clues, and keep trying to figure out the ghost.  Those should stay in.  Bravery, maybe (see next point).  The others are short-circuiting your game.  Ditch 'em.

d)  It sounds like fighting monsters is pretty central to your conception of what game play looks like.  So is overcoming or resisting the scares.  In terms of player resources, these are activities which preserve Health and Sanity.  Whether you model these with simple "Fighting" and "Stalwart" stats or diversify really (really really) depends on what kind of fights and overcoming-of-fear encounters you want to have.  I highly suggest your writing out a hypothetical transcript of a game, and then examine what the players are actually choosing to do (find the rusty hatchet in the garden versus unleash inner demon versus outwit the monster versus versus...).  Whatever the case, the point of these traits should not be to "win" but to mitigate the negative effects of encounters.  Characters in horror movies don't "win" -- they scrape through.  Your traits should let players do that.

e) The eventual "win" is never (okay, rarely) gained by punching the badguy in the face or being too hard core to be scared by his shennanigans.  The "win" is always the character figuring out how to exorcise/banish/free the ghost, which has nothing to do with character competency and everything to do with the players choosing the "right" option.  The hardcore, hugely competent  marines are always the first to go.  Whether or not there is one "right" option or the GM gets to judge whether a proposed solution is cool enough is... pretty irrelevant.  (Although if you take a page from Dogs and say whatever solution the players come up with is the correct one, you may have a killer game.)

f) I'd rather heartily suggest that you need a pacing mechanic -- horror movies and scary stories are all about pacing.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  Here's a suggestion that speeks to mechanics and motivating the players to solve the mystery.
  Maybe you just need 3 stats, Bravery for physical actions, Sanity for mental actions and Empathy for emotional actions.
  The mechanic is you have to spend points from a stat to use it and if it is successful, you get the points back. This represents the It's so crazy, it might work. Nope, it was just crazy. etc...
  Sounds like a good idea for a game if you can work it out and keep on the same theme.

[joepub]

Suggestion...

maybe Bravery is a die pool. Like every player has X bravery dice, they can put them into a collective pool.

And, sanity could maybe be done the same way? I don't know if that makes any sense, just a random thought.


Awareness/Empathy are, in essence, about perception. I think they could both be skill-based stats.
Awareness: "You see three faceless butchers coming toward you"
Empathy: "You see three weary, tired men lugging toward you, holding up butcher knives out of resignation more than anyhting"

[Sydney Freedberg]

I'm with Joshua.

In ghost stories (well, the ones of them I like, anyway), you can't "win" by beating down the beasties. (Zombie stories, yeah, all about beating down faster than you're beat; but that's not this). You can't even survive by beating down the beasties, because they just keep coming until you figure out what's causing them: They're just manifestations of the "anchor" haunting, as you've said. And the "anchor" haunting can't be resolved by brute force or even by skill and smarts, because what's tying the ghost to this world is always, always moral: Someone has been wronged so profoundly that the universe itself won't accept it and reality as we know breaks down to allow that someone to try to make things right even though they're already dead. But, of course, the ghost can never right the wrong itself -- it's too weak in the physical world, or it's too trapped in its own traumatized, obsessive, repetitive craziness -- so the heroes have to do it. When the heroes figure out the Wrong, they can confront it, do something to set it right or at least allow closure, and thus un-anchor the ghost, which means all the manifestations stop and reality goes back to normal.

So these stories tend to start with the heroes being threatened by the ghost, and end with the heroes rescuing the ghost from ghost-dom, and rescuing themselves in the process, by Making Things Right (Sixth Sense is a perfect example). Yes, sometimes the ghost itself is the Someone Who Did Wrong, now hanging around doing further evil, but those stories tend to have the ghost's un-anchor be a punishment, casting it into hell explicitly or implicitly so it can finally be punished for its evil life (e.g. The Haunting) -- so once again, the heroes only save themselves by Making Things Right.

You see why people love these stories? You start scared, but in the end, it's profoundly comforting: The universe doesn't just let us die if the moral balance is out of whack, it keeps us around as ghosts until what's wrong can somehow be set right, if only by having someone understand what really happened and acknowledge it.

[ks13]

My take was that this was primarily about gathering clues in order to find a solution, and fighting monsters was just a necessary part of being able to do that.
What I am interested in knowing is, is the intent to have the PLAYER do all the recognition and processing of clues, in which case monster fighting is a just a side issue for the character; or can the gathering of clues be in any way tied to the CHARACTER?

For the former, the player observes the clue, but has to determine if the character survives the encounter. Mechanics don't impact the clues in any way, and essentially only affect the resolution of the game indirectly - does the character live long enough for the player to put everything together?

In the later case, any fight or scary encounter has a potential to reveal clues, but with the "quality" of the clue being decided by the character (through the mechanics). The player still needs to interpret and process the clue, but the better their character performed, the better (potentially) the clues.

Either way is workable, but the dice mechanics will have a different focus and different requirements in each case.

-Al

[ks13]

One more question.

Is the solution for dealing with the ghost set by the GM and fixed-in-stone so to speak, or will it be more vaguely defined with the intent to determine the specifics during play?

As Joshua pointed out:

(Although if you take a page from Dogs and say whatever solution the players come up with is the correct one, you may have a killer game.)

[btrc]

I'll take a slightly different tack and look at it as a system rather than the story. I guess the important things to me are:

1) All attributes must be useful. For instance, if you role-play both the motivation and the smarts from the -player- end, then the -character- doesn't need much in the way of Empathy or Awareness. On the other hand, if you force Awareness rolls to get clues, then the -player- might know something but be unable to express it in -character-. Which is also bad.

2) Attribute/skill use needs to reinforce the genre. A pool of dice that is used up, a cumulative penalty or some other "ticking clock" puts characters under time pressure. Other things can subtly encourage genre conventions without beating people over the head with it. If lots of rolls are good, only allow one roll per group of characters. This "encourages" players to split up (if that's what you want). If there is an opportunity to leave a bad scene and come back later, encourage characters to stay by giving bonuses for "time spent on scene" or penalties for "being shaken enough to flee".

3) Similarly, attributes used and other aspects of character design need to foster development of whatever genre stereotypes you might have (ghost-hunting camerman, troubled psychic, priest, etc.). Certain skills or abilities might be far more useful if specialized in, and this can't be done well unless the player shorts the character somehow, thus forcing a reliance on others to cover for their weak areas.

My 2c.

Greg Porter
BTRC guy

[Justin Marx]

What about making the stat rolls themselves player competitive - not sure if this is where you're going - but the point of the story is NOT that everyone should die or go mad and never find out the Truth. Instead, assume that they will figure it out - whether they exorcise/banish the ghost is variable after that. But, the actual mystery of finding out what is going on should be assumed to occur - BUT - the trick is which of the characters will survive or stay sane, and who will have their heads hacked off by the horseman before the mystery is revealed?

To do this, if you do keep things like awareness rolls, make them competitive - someone is going to find the hatchet, but whoever is the most observant gets x number of tokens or whatever. The players roll against each other - the one with the best roll, wins and finds the object when everyone else is standing around. Add in expendable dice pools and start getting competitive use of resources - keeping your dice pools high will help you later, but it is probably not as good as gambling it against winning an awareness conflict and getting the bonus story tokens.

In this way, the game works into two halves - uncover the mystery, then resolve it. The latter part gets far more intense, and these story tokens somehow come into play to assist the player in beating the forces of opposition are arrayed against the players. So, the most perceptive or empathic character is more likely to pull through at the end and be the person who not only survives but manages to banish the beast. You have a definite end-game - the remaining players uncover the mystery, and now must use all the force they have to break their way into the house and stop the ritual. Besides, how many horror stories do you know where more than one character survives?

But this may not be what you're looking for. Just an idea. This would work best if you had fixed die pools that everyone had (Health, Sanity) and then player-chosen traits (Good eyesight, Intuitive etc.) and then weaved into play as appropriate. Maybe this is more of a gamist focussed idea (can't help it, I'm a gamist), I hope some of it helps.

[Sydney Freedberg]

the point of the story is NOT that everyone should die or go mad and never find out the Truth. Instead, assume that they will figure it out... the trick is which of the characters will survive or stay sane...if you do keep things like awareness rolls, make them competitive - someone is going to find the hatchet, but whoever is the most observant gets x number of tokens or whatever. The players roll against each other - the one with the best roll, wins and finds the object when everyone else is standing around.....So, the most perceptive or empathic character is more likely to pull through at the end and be the person who not only survives but manages to banish the beast.

This is brilliant. There's even a lovely set of tactical/moral dilemmas: You need to be tough, cautious, and pretty oblivious to the horrific implications of what's happening so you survive any particular attack with body and mind intact, but you also need to be sensitive and prone to wandering into dark, scary places to figure out what's happening and stop all the attacks. Teamwork is essential in the long term, because the sensitive characters need the tough guys to protect them and the tough guys need the sensitive characters to figure stuff out, but teamwork is risky in the short term, because my odds of surviving this attack are much better if you don't ("I don't have to run faster than the bear - I have to run faster than you.")

To really make this work, I'd suggest that in every "encounter," there's a clue to what's really going on (i.e. the source/ghost), and there's a risk of death -- and it is guaranteed in each encounter that one character will figure out that encounter's clue, and one character will die or at least be injured. So there's a double competition, as Justin said: whoever gets the best perception/empathy/sensitivity roll is the one who gets the clue, whoever gets the worst mental/physical toughness roll is the one who gets hurt (either killing that character outright or penalizing later survival rolls). And to make it more fun, things like "I go off alone" and "when the wall begins to bleed, I don't run away, I stare at it until the blood forms letters" should give bonuses to the "get a clue" roll and penalties to the "don't get hurt" roll.

Or this may be a totally different game than Scott is trying to design, at this point; but, darn it, somebody should design this one.