Resolution Mechanic- Need help with the use of descriptors

[Justin Nichol - BFG]

I'm currently trying to develop a Universal, Extensible, Open Source game engine for use with community developed settings. I want it to draw upon some narrativist game mechanics, while still being crunchy and recognizable to mainstream gamers. So I hope that the fact that the game isn't as experimental and freeform as many that are being made on the cutting edge wont discourage people from commenting. Things have been going relatively well but I've been having a little trouble with my resolution mechanic, primarily the fact that although I like the idea of descriptors, I can't explain to other people the use of them and I'm beginning to not understand them myself.

Here's my basic mechanic:

All talents and abilities range from Low to Exceptional, and each descriptor represents a modifier between -1 to +4. For talents, the modifier dictates the treshold of a given task. So for a wits check if the characters Wits was Average (+1), they'd have a base of 1 because you can't roll below 1 + the modifer of 1 for a threshold of 2, meaning each die that comes up 2 or below is a success. Talent Thresholds represent a characters ability to suprass their limits. For Abilities, which actually rate a character normal limits, the descriptor modifier gives a character their number of automatic successes. Checks are made by rolling 3D6 and each die that comes up below a characters threshold result in a success, while 6's remove a success. Difficulty is the number of successes necessary and run an extended list of descriptors from low to impossible. Difficulties correspond to the ability descriptors in a specific way namely, and for example, an intermediate difficulty would require one more success than an intermediate ability gives in automatic successes, so that a difficulty that matches the descriptor of an ability is a challenge and requires a success to achieve.

So I was relatively happy with the basic idea of it, but I've heard several times that people think that just having numbers would be better than descriptors because the conversion doesn't actually change the numbers. When I tried to explain how descriptors work in other games, they thought descriptors were at best replacements for numbers and at worst unnecessary complexity. I feel plain numbers are kind of impersonal but I kind of see their point. It's been brought up on this forum as well when I posted my game under connections in a call for co-developers. I mean even in Fudge or Fate, which use descriptors about as well as I can think of using them, you're just replacing descriptors for number, because you could just easily have a number rather than a descriptor and have the difficulty be represented in numbers. In other systems like PDQ, there are also conversions from descriptors to numbers, but I like PDQ and people don't seem to mind the descriptor conversion in PDQ.

SO I was wondering if you guys could give me some feedback on the resolution mechanic, and maybe give me some better explanation of the use of descriptors instead of numbers.

I like it because it makes it less impersonal, I mean I would rather have a "Meager" ability than a +0 ability, at least Meager gives me an idea of what I can do. Also it's easier to liken the relative ability score to a difficulty that is appropriately difficult. I also wanted to have a context based difficulty mechanism where you could have a human with an average lifting ability, and a giant with an average lifting ability but in context the difficulty would be lower for the giant than the human because the giant is in a different ballpark than the human. I thought I'd show this through having a Gift gauge for superhuman abilities that would lower the difficulty by an amount dictated by it's own descriptor modifier. But when I bring this up to other people they say they'd rather just have a wider range of numbers and have the average giant be a few steps above the average human. But that's exactly what I dont want is a wide range of numbers and an over attentive modeling system for different things like strength. Any thoughts? Suggestions?

[TwoCrows]

I'd be willing to give a free opinion, but it would help me to see the Discriptor Chart just like it would be printed in the ruleset, and an example of use in play (with the dice rolls, and result listed).

Regards, Brad

[Justin Nichol - BFG]

Descriptor Modifiers:

Low                 -1
Meager                   0
Average                    +1
Intermediate      +2
Exceptional      +3
Extraordinary           +4

The modifiers affect Talents and Abilities in separate ways but both use the same modifier chart. For talents, your modifier is added to a base of 1 to determine your threshold for an overall group of tasks. The talents are as follows:

Physique- Overall fitness, strength and explosive muscular power.
Coordination- A characters ability to correlate the movements of their body in a meaningful way.
Presence- Charisma and the ability to impress ones will upon others, very often related to supernatural abilities.
Wits- The ability to think on ones feet, to think through problems and the speed of ones reaction to stimulus.
Style- A more abstract measurement of the characters j'ne se qua. Also the ability to improvise and handle situations.

Abilities are the actual specific capabilities and normal limits of a character. The descriptor modifiers for abilities give a character the number of automatic successes they get on any roll involving that ability.

Difficulties do not use the descritpor modifier table but use an extended list of the same descriptors and are as follows:

Low        0   
Meager      1
Average      2
Intermediate   3
Exceptional    4
Extraordinary  5
Incredible     6
Legendary   7
Impossible   8

Each difficulty level corresponds to the same descriptor for abilities in a specific way. An Intermediate difficulty task requires 3 successes, while an Intermediate ability score only provides 2 automatic successes, and this is true of all of the difficulties. Meaning if someone is attempting a task that is the same difficulty as their level of ability, it is a challenge and requires two successes. I did the Algebra, and for a person with an Average (+1) talent, and calculating the likelihood of sixes, this boils down to roughly one half of the time, a character will succeed. A person with a higher talent is more capable of reaching beyond their normal limits, and can score more successes.

When a check is made, the contestant(s) roll 3D6, each die that comes up at or below the threshold for the specified talent adds a success, each 6 removes a success. If you have enough automatic successes from your ability to succeed at a task before rolling, you can spend a style point to automatically succeed, this is called a dramatic success.

Style Points- Style points are an important part of Core, and allow characters to perform Cinematics (which are basically like Feats or Stunts and are meant to give characters abilities that are cinematic and for which they do not have to roll), and to increase their likelihood of succeeding at dramatic checks. Right now, they are capable of doing the following.

To score dramatic successes when the characters ability level is high enough to succeed automatically. (1 Point)

To fuel cinematics (Variable points)

To increase a characters Threshold for one Action. (1 point)

To achieve in-game effects that enhance drama (knowing a piece of information about an event, finding a clue at the right moment) (Variable points- Determined by Player and Storyteller)

Sequence of Play-

A character must first declare what they are going to do.

The thesholds, difficulties, etc are calculated and the roll is made if there is not a dramatic success.

After the roll is made a character spends Style Points, declares themselves In Their Element, or manipulates Mise En Scene to alter the roll, all the while using soliloquy and describing their action in a specific way to justify to the storyteller any expenditure of style or use of special rules.

The outcome is then determined and narrated.

The reason for this sequence of play is that I feel the randomness of dice are not actually well suited to the natural curve of success or failure that humans undergo in tasks. And that the likelihood of randomly rolling poorly doesn't really sit well with me. And I especially feel that in a game that is intended to induce dramatic roleplaying, it would be especially annoying to spend style, be In Your Element, describe how the Mise En Scene is fueling your Elements, and then roll crap and fail after all that effort. The point of Roleplaying in my opinion is fun and interactive storytelling. I don't want to simulate a world where people try really dramatic things and randomly fail, I want a game that simulates movies and books, and the stylish and interesting things characters can do in them. So if a failure does occur a player needn't spend extra points and invoke special rules and put forth a lot of effort. Think of a sword fight in a movie, a swordsman may miss and be parried many times, but when they finally strike true, it's no fluke of chance, it's a stylish and willful action, and that's what I'm shooting for.

Example of Play

Conrad has two tasks ahead of him. The first thing he has to do is jump across a crevass that falls away into blackness. His Physique talent is Intermediate (+2) so he has a threshold of 3. His storyteller informs him that the task will be an Athletics check of Exceptional difficulty. His Athletics descriptor is Intermediate (+2), meaning he requires two successes above his automatic successes to succeed. He rolls and gets a 1 a 4 and a 5. Only one success because his threshold was 3. Now that the fortune has been determined, Conrads player declare that he'll be using a style point, and describes briefly how Conrad makes the sign of the corss over his chest, cups his nether regions and takes a screaming running leap. The storyteller gets a kick out of this and decides to allow the style expenditure (especially because it would be contrary to the good of the story to have a character fall down a crevass). The storyteller then narrates that he grabs what his maker gave him and takes a running leap, and slams hard in to the lip of the crevass, nearly winding himself but managing to get a handhold and scramble from the blackness.

Next Conrad must climb a rope. Conrads player says he takes a bit of a breather, and then sets about climbing it. The storyteller declares the difficulty to be an Average (2) Athletics check. Conrad has an Intermediate (+2) Athletics score, meaning he has enough successes to take a dramatic success if che chooses. Because he could still roll 6s and fail the task there is some risk involved, and because Conrad has more Style than time, he opts for the dramatic success and climbs the rope with ease whistling as he travels up towards a point of light.




So what do you think? Can anyone think of a way to make descriptors be more central? I like them because it gives a way to correlate relative ability to appropriate difficulties. If anyone is interested, I am still looking for co-developers to help with settings creation, and refinement of the system.

[Callan S.]

Think of a sword fight in a movie, a swordsman may miss and be parried many times, but when they finally strike true, it's no fluke of chance, it's a stylish and willful action, and that's what I'm shooting for.

As I see the structure of many a movie, the final true strike isn't at all about winning the sword fight, it's about demonstrating the characters commitment to the action. The final strike is a 'THERE, SEE!!' moment, designed to highlight that commitment. Who cares how the fight would turn out, it's the commitment that matters. Also the stylishness is sort of a suggestion of the 'truth' of the moment - as in it is the right commitment - "It's so cool because when something is so right, it's cool like that!"

What I'm trying to get at is that your not seeing physical actions, your seeing language - the authors words, as he communicates the characters commitment. Basically that's where rules which emulate physical actions fall down in this area - there's no communication conveyed about whats in the characters head.

What did/do you get out of the movie in such a scene?

[Aaron Blain]

Ditto to Callan! Especially since you are making a game about telling stories, not about winning battles.

I have been thinking about some of these concepts for a long time. I am very excited by tight value ranges because they make value judgements so much more decisive. This in turn makes quick value judgements VERY easy.

And for me, the prime attraction of value descriptors is that they instantly translate verbal descriptions into values which we can use in task resolution.

Conan The Barbarian just entered the scene. QUICK! Make a character sheet for him!

Uhh . . let's see . . . Swordsmanship ? Extroardinary. Physique? Extraordinary! Diplomacy? LOW!

Boom! New character! Ready to go! Most of the godawful, miserable railroading that takes place in mainstream games is due to the huge amount of prep time required of the GM. If he spent 45 minutes picking out feats for the captain of the guard, do you really think we'll be allowed to ignore him? White Wolf games are nearly as bad.

All of my (terrible) GM friends, when convicted of railroading, cry that their hands are tied by prep time.

True, you aren't using any avant-garde authorship-distribution techniques, but this will give the GM freedom to feel comfortable letting the players re-shape the story.

[Justin Nichol - BFG]

Yea. That's why I like Descriptors too, plus it just seems a lot less impersonal, like I said before, to have an Exceptional Horsemanship ability rather than a +3 Horsemanship ability, or worse off a +0 Horsemanship ability. os what I think I'm going to do is justify their use through their correlation to difficulties, and change the notation of the descriptors to the style I've been using in this thread, where instead of Average, you write Average (+1) that way the number is readily at hand.

As far as my game being about story, it's true, I want a game that encourages story and that makes a substantive rules impotus for dramatic action, not just encourages dramatic play after the fact in some blurb in the Storytellers section. But despite the decidedly Narrativist bent I'm trying to introduce, because I'm making a Universal system, I want the rules to still be sufficiently crunchy and solid to appease those people who want to know just what their character can. I'm not trying to create something totally experimental and freeform, while I love those games, it does not fit my current design goals, i.e. providing a Universal Open Source system that appeals to Mainstream gamers as well as indie gamers.

I would love to hear other suggestions.

[Noclue]

Yea. That's why I like Descriptors too, plus it just seems a lot less impersonal, like I said before, to have an Exceptional Horsemanship ability rather than a +3 Horsemanship ability, or worse off a +0 Horsemanship ability. os what I think I'm going to do is justify their use through their correlation to difficulties, and change the notation of the descriptors to the style I've been using in this thread, where instead of Average, you write Average (+1) that way the number is readily at hand.

My one wish is that the descriptors be hard to confuse. I can not tell the difference between a LOW skill and a MEAGER skill without the number (until i've memorized the ladder, but by that time I'm probably using the number rather than the descriptor). Same with AVERAGE and INTERMEDIATE. Words like EXTRAORDINARY and INCREDIBLE give me pause too, but I can reason it out. Extraordinary is above normal. Incredible is unbelievably good. So, unbelievably good is better than above normal.

I automatically know the rankings of a ladder comprised of abysmal, poor, average, above average, good, great, incredible, legendary

[Justin Nichol - BFG]

yea I guess I can see that. But I wanted to have adjective for the descriptors that could describe a level of skill and a level of difficulty,  what does Abysmal difficulty mean, is that good or bad? if it's an abysmal difficulty that could means it's really difficult.

Should I perhaps change meager to average, and intermediate to above average? Can anyone think of adjectives that fit both purposes?

[Anders Larsen]

Can anyone think of a way to make descriptors be more central?

The problem here is that these descriptors, that just describe ability levels and difficulty level, do not have any effect in the game, because before you use them in the game, you have to convert them to numbers; and then it is only the number which is important. It is not that I see any problems with having descriptors - apart from the one Noclue mentioned - and it does give some flavor to the system; but that is all it does.

But then how to make these descriptors have an effect in the game? One possibility is to have the player choose the level description of an ability that tells how the character succeeds or fails. For example, instead of having:

Average(+1) Horsemanship

Then have:

Horsemanship: horses hates me, and I hate them, but luckily I normally get where I want (+1)

This description will probably have an effect in the game. The player can use it to describe how he react toward the horse, and the GM can use it to describe how the horse react toward the character. If the player succeed the test, the GM can describe how the character has to fight the horse every step of the way, and if the player fails, the horse may actually attack him. This will not have numeral effect - the chance is still the same - but it will have an clear effect on how things are described in the game.

 - Anders

[TwoCrows]

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3This is a point of consideration for all those games that live & die in the attached at the hip to the Wargaming Legacy potential pitfall.

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3This is a point of consideration for all those games that live & die in the attached at the hip to the Wargaming Legacy potential pitfall.

4</sup>

[TwoCrows]

Heh, uhmm...wow

[Justin Nichol - BFG]

Wow thanks for the replies.

As for the name CORE, yea I hear a lot of people grumble that using acronyms like that is so  80s and 90s, so I was kinda flip flopping, but I had previously thought of calling it Completely Open Roleplaying Engine, but I actually think I like Cinematic Open Roleplaying Engine better as you suggested. And I think CORE stands well enough on it's own that people don't have to refer to any acronym if they don't want to unlike gurps which I just dont really like to say, it sounds like a venerial disease. I definitely don't want a case of the gurps.

I definitely agree with the rules simplification tools advice, and really want to incorporate as much simplification as possible. I already known one instance in which I could use such advice. Talents determine thresholds and thresholds do not fluctuate with difficulty, so on the charsheet where Talents are noted, there should be a space to write your figured threshold, because I could foresee people looking at their sheet if they think there's a calculation to be done, but memorizing their thresholds much more easily if there is a space to write them. I'm a graphic designer by schooling so I've been putting together a simple character sheet and I certainly want to incorporate as much as I can into it to simplify the rules.

As for your suggestion Anders, you might have something there, I might not encourage an overly detailed descriptor sentence but I could perhaps introduce ability elements where you replace the descriptor with one of your own for the cost of a few character points and can call on it to get in your element when appropriate, sort of like a narrativist answer to skill specializations.

Finally, Extensible. I started by calling the game Modular and I still want it to be, but I realized I didn't really want a game like Fudge where everything was interchangeable because that would cause a lot of cross-compatability issues for community developers, or would require a ton fo conversion rules that are no fun. SO essentially what I want to do is have a distilled and highly sophisticated and playtested central engine from which the game can be added to with optional rules for more complex play or to address issues that don't occur in every game. You don't necessarily need a Sanity score for a Fantasy Adventure Game. So basically I started calling it extensible, I still want modularity, for instance I want to have a diceless system that can replace the rolling system, but I want it to function in place of and intertwined with all the other rules and not just be switched out willy nilly.

As for your second post Brad, I'm not quite sure I understand. Copyright infringement? Dream Pod 9?

[TwoCrows]

[Justin Nichol - BFG]

hmm, oh ok. Yea, from what I remember of my ethics and legalities class, I don't think there are issues with the copyright, but I could be wrong. I think you could call your game Dark Dungeons a la Chick, and using the word dungeons isn't something d&d can sue you for. I certainly hope it's not an issue because I've gotten rather used to the name CORE. Originally I was going to call it opencore, but there is some IT company that uses that name for something and I didn't want to overlap with them even though the two projects were clearly distinguishable.

But I'm not sure with this because they have a system called CORE Command and Sillhouette CORE, hmm not sure if it'll be an issue.

[Noclue]

hmm, oh ok. Yea, from what I remember of my ethics and legalities class, I don't think there are issues with the copyright, but I could be wrong. I think you could call your game Dark Dungeons a la Chick, and using the word dungeons isn't something d&d can sue you for. I certainly hope it's not an issue because I've gotten rather used to the name CORE. Originally I was going to call it opencore, but there is some IT company that uses that name for something and I didn't want to overlap with them even though the two projects were clearly distinguishable.

But I'm not sure with this because they have a system called CORE Command and Sillhouette CORE, hmm not sure if it'll be an issue.

Well, even if your name is not exactly the same, the original holder of the trademark might be able to argue that your use of CORE creates "confusion in the marketplace" if they are another RPG game. For example, D&D can't argue that they own the word dungeon, but go ahead and try Dungeons & Drakes and see what happens.