Basic Mechanic building from the ground up

[shays]

I agree that players like to see their characters improve. My worry would be in how much your overall power level would jump for a character, between Level 1 and Level 2. If such a jump is pretty noticeable, what do characters look like at Level 10?

Yes, this is another dilemma of mine... how to level up.  I have considered the point base system, I am also looking into a level by feat system with feat trees.  This would mean that a character is pretty much complete as far as powers are concerned after character creation.  Some feats would allow for skills to be increased for specific tasks.  I haven't nailed this down yet though as I want to make sure I have a challenge system that will actually work before I build on it.  Your input is welcomed.

[shays]

Cheers. Interesting timing. I was just spouting off about base mechanic challenges a couple of days ago, and some of the troubles I had. The *very* interesting this is that at one point in development, I considering using a d20 + base system against a nearly identical difficulty range.

I just got through reading your thread in playtesting a second ago.  Very interesting results you had.  I will definately need to do some more thinking but this is what I had in mind for this mechanic.  Most challenges will be in the 1-25 range and most characters with only have bonuses of anywhere between +1 (+5%) to +3 (+15%) for normal attributes and +5 (+25%) to +15 (+75%) for skills.  Only super powers will have a stat above these thresholds, thus making them something special.  I will definitly put more thought into this though.  Thanks for the insight in your thread.

[Callan S.]

Hi Shays,

One of the problems I've found with assigned difficulty numbers is that the GM will set high numbers for stuff he doesn't want and lower numbers for stuff he does. Ie, it doesn't really make sense for the GM to think 'Hey, so and so would be cool...I'm going to set a number that makes it unlikely it'll happen'. The GM comes for the cool like everyone else, so he's not really going to shoot himself in the foot. What do you think?

Interesting...
My thought was to have a basic building block for adventure creation, something abstract that allows to quickly put together a campaign but also grounded in reality.  In other words the system is objective in what is considered easy, difficult, and super hard despite the abilities of individual players.  For example, a chasm may have a difficulty rating of: Very Difficult (15) (represents 25 feet chasm) but a character with a jump characteristic of say +10 would find the jump fairly easy while a character with a jump characteristic of +15 or more would not even need to roll the dice.

That's kind of not answering my question - but I might be wrong and it does answer. Basically the problem I outlined is the GM pumps up the difficulty when he doesn't want something to happen - lets say he doesn't want them on the other side of the chasm.

Your example kind of suggests that a mere 25 foot jump wouldn't be enough to block the example PC's. The GM would have to really 'pay' to block them, by introducing a really, really big chasm. This might somehow be used by the players to their advantage latter, perhaps - it's certainly not easy to forget a massive canyon like that and what effects its highly suggestive of. The sort of shut down I was thinking of is where say the GM makes the lock on the door a really high DC cause he doesn't want you to get through - a difficult lock doesn't really add anything to the game world, but a really wide canyon would.

I can see some value to what your saying relative to the problem I outlined, but I'm not sure if you intended to say that?

[jag]

< 20 - Very Difficult
< 25 - Heroic
< 30 - Colossal
< 35 - Monsterous
< 40 - Unearthly
< 45 - Cosmic
< 50 - Infinite
(names subject to change)

...

To accomplish the following tasks the character must have a bonus to their base attribute
Difficulty  /  Bonus needed to have a 50% chance of success
Heroic / +15
Colossal +20
Monsterous +25
Unearthly +30
Cosmic +35
Infinite +40

Depending on how much you care about each of those scales feeling very different, you might have a problem here.  In particular, someone who has a 50% chance of succeeding at a cosmic challenge will have a 25% chance of succeeding at an infinite challenge.  To me, that feels like those two 'scales' are too close.  You might not have any attachment to those names, and that might help, but fundamentally in a d20 system a difference of 5 points is more like a different grade within a scale, rather than a different scale.  Multipliers or more gaussian randomizers can help that.

[Ken]

...a character that could routinely accomplish upper scale actions would never be challenged by more ordinary situations; they wouldn't even have to roll for lower scale stuff. Is that your intent, or do you see having a randomizing factor to keep characters rolling for less challenging actions?

I looked at this from the stand point that a character would have a very narrow focus on characteristics that were super,  only some skills, only some abilities. 

What would be your means of driving this narrow focus on super characteristics; is it in your rules that you can't have more than so many super stats, or do you intend to use a character point building system that makes stacking these stats prohibitive? Either way, the real difficulty that I see here is that having (and focusing) on a super stat makes not just mundane, but even dramatic challenges a non-issue. This type of wide-ranged linear difficulty progression breaks down when a character has a stat rank high enough to accomplish truly amazing feats; everything else pales in comparison and can be accomplished without even a die roll.

The classic GM maneuver here may be just to amp up the action a bit, so that a super stat character is challenged, but that may prove troublesome, if the other characters on the team don't the same (or any) level of super stat. If the super stat character gets taken out (or whatever) too early, then the remaining characters won't have a prayer to accomplish the goal (which may be OK; maybe they retreat, regroup, and try again-or change professions-thats dramatic too).

I'm assuming that rolling a natural one means failure. If so, this is kind of a start; it means that everyone has a chance to screw up 5% of the time and that may help keep super stat characters in line. Super games are hard, because of the vast range of abilities that need to be covered, while at the same time maintaining enough balance for uber-powered character to work next to highly skilled normals. A less linear bonus progression may work better here; something that doesn't completely shut out less powered characters or makes simple tests impossible to fail.

I often think of the speedster, who is traditionally really gifted at the characteristics needed to punch someone; while normal thugs should probably always get slugged, does a system like this mean that the speedster NEVER misses? This could get frustrating when pitted against normal villains who should be menacing, but never really have a chance because of the gap in ability.

If you have more examples of this flaw I would love to hear them.  This is definately something I need to consider.  If there are only a few I think I can design them out of play somewhat.  And yes the super speedster is definitly one of those powers that can break a whole system.  I mean theoretically a speedster could never get hit either if we relied on real pysics.

One of the things that I'm constantly at odds with, while working on Ten-Cent Heroes is how normal masterminds can hold their own against super-powered heroes. In the comics, its easy; the writer does it. In a game setting, it becomes a little tougher to keep your evil geniuses from getting pounced, without resorting to giving them powers. Stylistically speaking, what fills the gap here between the weak and the strong is that the villain is important to the story; luck and destiny is on his side. In reality this is physically unquantifiable, but needs to be quantified in a game system to give some balance.

This may be one of those situations where a level system may work in a hero game; if the levels described the dramatic importance of a character in the story, and not just skill or experience. Here experience points could be awarded for doing amazing things that cements the characters place in the story and qualifies them as the star(s) of the game. Villains could have higher levels to represent their superior place in the story at hand (their super-crime), and thus would be more formidable without having to have a bunch of powers or contrived nonsense. Now if your plan is just to field evenly matched teams of super-bruisers then there may not be a need for any of this, but in cases where you want to have a single menace, then they may need an edge to counter superior numbers on the opposition.

Ken

[Adam Riemenschneider]

Hey Shays,

Well, feat/tree systems are okay; better than level systems in my book, but I'm an opinionated fellow. I'm pretty sure you can get what you want going that way.

For your base mechanic, I keep thinking that taking your attribute (1-3) + skill (5-15) + random 1d20 is going to produce too varied of results. I just want to make sure you're okay with what's going to happen because of that d20 being used in this way.

Especially if you are treating a 1 or a 20 in any special kind of "auto fail, auto success" kind of way. I know this is pretty traditional in d20 use in RPGs. Personally, I really don't like what it means when you try to play a vaguely realistic game. It means that Einstein fails a very low physics test 5% of the time, and it means that my grandma can benchpress a car 5% of the time. I agree that there should be some chance of Einstein failing, especially if I can throw modifiers at him for being tired, drunk, distracted, or whatnot. Really, though, I'm not okay with any scenerio that allows my grandma to bench a Buick. But that's just me.

Again, a lot of games use a d20 in the way you're approaching. But there are other options, without having to monkey around too much with your difficulties or ranges. These other options *will* alter your game feel, though.

Option 1: Roll 3d6, add them to your Base. Minimum roll 3, Max is 18. The worst Einstein can roll is now 18. If you have enough negative modifiers to throw at him for being distracted, drunk, etc to get him down to 3ish, you can make it work from this direction. The best my Grandma can do is 19. On her best day, I think Granny can bench about 200 lbs. If her life depended on it. So, yeah. Watch out here, in describing what a 19 means means, in pretty much anything. The nice thing here is that most of the time, you can count on the actual dice coming up with a range of 8-13. This will be pretty dependable, and you can build your difficulties off of it. If an average person has a 1 Attribute and a Skill worth +5 (Base 6), an "average" difficulty of 14-19 will be pretty solid.

Option 2: Roll 2d10, add them to your Base. You get pretty close to the same range as above, but the results are a lot less dependable. Still, they'd be twice as dependable as a single d20, so that's saying something. Minimum roll is 2, Max is 20.

Option 3: Roll 5d4. Even more dependable than Option 1. Your minimum roll is 5, your Max is 20. These Min and Max values will almost *never* come up in actual play (about .1 percent, or 1 out of 1000). But you have an added annoyance factor to deal with. Your players have to add up 5 different dice, an Attribute, and a Skill bonus. At least the numbers are pretty low.

Option 4: A percentile chart. You roll a percentile for everything, and compare to something that looks vaguely like this:
01: 1% chance, +1
2-3: 2% chance, +2
4-7: 4% chance, +3
8-15: 8% chance, +4
16-31: 16% chance, +5
32-69: 38% chance, +6
70-85: 16% chance, +7
86-93: 8% chance, +8
94-97: 4% chance, +9
98-99: 2% chance, +10
100: 1% chance, +11

Note that both the "% chance" and the "+ values" I chose are completely out of my hat, WAGs. With this example, you have a 70% chance of getting a +5-7 result. It trims your random value "+" range to +1-11, which is nice for limiting my Grandma to a benchpress result of 12, which might be low enough.

If you want, you can lower all of the "+" values by 5, and therefore have a general 7% chance of a character backsliding from their base (since the lowest % results will result in a negative value). This might be enough to make Einstein fail, but only if you make minimum difficulty 15.

Make sense?

[Ken]

Option 2: Roll 2d10, add them to your Base. You get pretty close to the same range as above, but the results are a lot less dependable. Still, they'd be twice as dependable as a single d20, so that's saying something. Minimum roll is 2, Max is 20.

This is a pretty interesting alternative; it allows you to keep your basic range of randomization with a wierder curve. It also allows for a different take on your power stats. What if (using 2d10) as your core dice, power stats gave you additional d10s to roll as opposed to a static bonus? This would allow characters to achieve amazing levels of success, but still add a bit of randomness and uncertainty into the mix.

Also,

Hi Shays,

One of the problems I've found with assigned difficulty numbers is that the GM will set high numbers for stuff he doesn't want and lower numbers for stuff he does. Ie, it doesn't really make sense for the GM to think 'Hey, so and so would be cool...I'm going to set a number that makes it unlikely it'll happen'. The GM comes for the cool like everyone else, so he's not really going to shoot himself in the foot. What do you think?

I think this is classic GMs' prerogative; its the GM's job to drive the story and so they are the arbiter of how difficult something is at a given time. This may seem malicious by the players sometimes, but I think this is as much to do with the players not seeing the big picture than the GM being a jerk. Personally, I would rather feel railroaded than watch a sobbing GM with a lap full of broken story line. I'm not going to argue game politics here. Now, going the other way with this, I think it would be neat if difficulty values did change to reflect story drama.

I think that a common story formula is heroes meet villains to a near stalemate; villains get away/ heroes re-encounter villains; villains win/ heroes get their act together and save the day. Its funny, but the "Super-Harlem Globetrotters" cartoon from a few decades ago comes to mind. The team would suffer in the first half of a game vs. robots or whatever, and then take the bad-guys to town in the second half. I don't a specific way of suggesting how this would fit your game; maybe a floating bonus based on how has got their act the most together, Callan's comment just got me thinking about that.

Anyway, interested in reading more about your game,

Ken

[hermes]

This may be one of those situations where a level system may work in a hero game; if the levels described the dramatic importance of a character in the story, and not just skill or experience. Here experience points could be awarded for doing amazing things that cements the characters place in the story and qualifies them as the star(s) of the game. Villains could have higher levels to represent their superior place in the story at hand (their super-crime), and thus would be more formidable without having to have a bunch of powers or contrived nonsense.

For what it's worth, that is essentially what I did with Capes & Cowls (mentioned in a previous post).  Although I would never willingly use the term "levels", characters (whether PC or NPC) are ranked based on their importance to the story, rather than their actual quantifiable and measurable power level. 

Just another quick comment while I'm logged in...one of the biggest problems for a supers game with a complex system of stats and probabilities, is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to assign quantifiable numbers in "real-world" terms to super powers which, by definition, break the rules of reality.  It is a common convention of comics, for instance, that the Hulk can punch a hole in a tank in one panel, utterly destroying it, then punch a B-list villain in the next panel, hurling them across a room and through a wall.  Yet, despite the villain having a soft, fleshy face that is realistically much more yielding than the nigh-impenetrable tank armour, he or she does not have their face splattered into oblivion and often stands up a few panels later to resume the battle.  You might say that the Hulk's punch scales to his target, but I would be more inclined to say that the Hulk's punch scales to the needs of the story.  Regardless, it's a huge obstacle to overcome in a supers game.

Glenn

[shays]

Make sense?

YES, this has really got me thinking.  Hmmm.... 

[shays]

Option 2: Roll 2d10, add them to your Base. You get pretty close to the same range as above, but the results are a lot less dependable. Still, they'd be twice as dependable as a single d20, so that's saying something. Minimum roll is 2, Max is 20.

This is a pretty interesting alternative; it allows you to keep your basic range of randomization with a wierder curve. It also allows for a different take on your power stats. What if (using 2d10) as your core dice, power stats gave you additional d10s to roll as opposed to a static bonus? This would allow characters to achieve amazing levels of success, but still add a bit of randomness and uncertainty into the mix.

I've thought about dice pools to some degree, but it seems that dice pools (especially with d20s) would slow down play do to calculations needed after each dice roll.  Maybe I am trying to over simplify things though.  Nice idea though.

[Darcy Burgess]

Hi Shays,

I'm going to wade in here and disagree very strongly with Ken's statement that hosing players through at-a-whim inflated target numbers is "...classic GMs' perogative..."  This may, in one sense be historically accurate -- it's true, for a very long time we've had a history of games that provide little or no real constraints on what difficulty stuff is.  However, standing on the shoulders of history and saying "this is the way it's always been, and that's how it's going to be moving forwards" is a pretty weak argument.  It's the wolf of GM fiat, dressed up in the sheep's clothing of "setting a target number".

What I've seen when I've been on either end of GM fiat is players who:

1. lose trust in the GM as a fair arbiter of difficulty, and then
2. accept that the GM isn't playing fair, and react by 'sitting back and let the GM lead them around by the nose'

This of course begs the question, why wouldn't you just watch a movie with the same group of friends?  It's undoubtedly better-written, better-produced, and equally interactive as a Fiat-ridden "game".

D

[Ken]

I'm going to wade in here and disagree very strongly with Ken's statement that hosing players through at-a-whim inflated target numbers is "...classic GMs' perogative..." 

Just because players feel hosed doesn't mean that the GM was out to hose them. One thing I've noticed through my Ten-Cent Heroes playtests (and all my gaming experiences really) is that players don't always realize the reason things don't go their way...only that they didn't get what they want. I pretty much only play super-hero games, so my players (and myself on occasion) are usually up against villains and masterminds who have been plotting a caper while we were putting out fires and saving cats from trees. When encountering a super-villain in the midst of their premeditated crime, its reasonable to believe that the heroes do not have the home team advantage; so things that should be pretty easy, aren't (for some mysterious reason).

Anyway, I'm not defending GMs who want to be jerks, I'm simply stating that I do not believe that all difficulty-value game systems lead GMs to be jerks. Now, the only reason why I'm responding to the above post is to support Shays's choice to use a difficulty system; some members were a little critical of it (more for situations that could happen, than for unescapable flaws in these types of rules) and I think he is on the right track. I'm not here to debate game-politics or flame; just to help a fellow designer/enthusiast to design.

What someone does with a game once they've bought it (or whatever) is their business (its like the golden rule of gaming); our business should be to make a game that works without us having to be there to babysit it. That is not always easy. GMs unfairly setting difficulty values should be a cautionary tale to GMs not designers. Even if a designer set rules that fair and just; it wouldn't keep a GM from doing what they want (for better or worse). Designing a game that clearly needs a GM but prevents them from being unfair is a noble cause, but I don't see how you do that. The cure for having a jerky GM is to go get another GM.

Take care,

Ken

[Ken]

I've thought about dice pools to some degree, but it seems that dice pools (especially with d20s) would slow down play do to calculations needed after each dice roll.  Maybe I am trying to over simplify things though.  Nice idea though.

Oh, I don't know if its over simple. D20 as a whole is a pretty elegant system, but I think that the incredible range of ability present in a comic book super hero game may be too much for it to work and retain its charm. Really the only way to know for sure is try it. I started playing Ten-Cent Heroes with just half of the rules complete, and it helped me not waste time on things that seemed too complex or just non-functional.

I'm also a number-runner; I'll play hypotheticals in my head for an hour or so, to see if I can pick out problems with various rules. I went through about a dozen different core mechanic ideas (including d20) before I settled on my diceless engine; sometimes all you learn when testing a game design is that its time to try a new design. The great thing about the Forge is that there are a lot of like-minded people who have been (or are) where you are and are willing to help bounce ideas.

Keep it up, and take care.

Ken

[hermes]

What I've seen when I've been on either end of GM fiat is players who:

1. lose trust in the GM as a fair arbiter of difficulty, and then
2. accept that the GM isn't playing fair, and react by 'sitting back and let the GM lead them around by the nose'

Darcy,

I'll leap to the defense of GM fiat because I have been fortunate enough to see it used to great effect.  Mutants & Masterminds does something interesting by making the GM fiat an actual game mechanic.  The superhero genre, perhaps more than any other, almost begs for its use.  Villainous masterminds are infamous for having tricks up their sleeves (and it's important to note that these masterminds are supposed to be more intelligent than most normal humans are capable of being, and that includes GM's, so I don't think it's crazy to need a mechanic to give our super-intelligent villains an edge that a mere GM might not naturally possess). 

Another comic book convention is that the heroes often encounter a villain early on, but the villain escapes or perhaps even earns a small victory, so that the heroes can confront him or her later on in the all-important climactic battle near the end of the adventure.  A fiat may very well be needed to preserve the storyline (hopefully not, but whenever creative players and/or dice are present, anything can happen).  This isn't necessarily a bad thing--it's a part of the genre.

In Mutants & Masterminds, the GM can use a fiat to accomplish just about anything.  It might be used to shake off a damage condition in order to prolong a fight that simply ended too quickly due to extremely good or bad dice rolls (therefore being used to improve the dramatic quality of the fight).  Or, perhaps it might be used to give the villain an extra action in order to escape at the last second.  However, and here is the important part, whenever the GM uses a fiat, he or she hands over a "hero point" to the player or players who were affected by it.  In effect, it is almost like a confession: yes, I need to bend the rules right now in order to ensure that the story doesn't end prematurely or to promote more drama and excitement, but I don't want you to feel cheated so you are receiving a small reward which will allow you to bend the rules at a time of your choosing to ensure that you don't have your playing experience ruined by an untimely failure or to allow you to improve the dramatic impact of a later scene.  It ends up balancing out.  In my experience with the game, it works wonderfully.

Shay,

Now that I've followed that particular tangent, I'll see if I can add something that deals a little more closely with the sort of ideas that you have been discussing.  I have found that most "difficulty ratings" are pretty much arbitrary.  Whether you assign ratings of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, they both amount to the same thing with the only differences being the dice used.  No systems that I know of would ever try to differentiate between, say, 23 and 24.  That level of granularity just isn't practical, hence the pattern of going up by 5's.  It's a fairly simple matter for a GM to eyeball a situation and pick a reasonable-sounding number.  If a GM declares a difficulty of 25 when it probably should have been a 20, it's unlikely that the world will come to a sudden and tragic end.  The important thing is to just keep the game moving.  Good GM's can recognize when they have put the players at a disadvantage and can easily give them a chance to get back on an even footing (or even give them an advantage if needed). 

I believe that the mechanics should exist to provide the players and GM with some fundamental baseline rules to follow (in much the same way that most of us understand the basic rules of traffic when we drive or the laws of gravity when we decide to climb a ladder).  As long as we have some idea of the numbers and the scale, we can make reasonable predications about our chances for potential success or failure.  That is the "game" aspect of a role-playing game.  The actual numbers used, stats, skills, dice, etc. are all just various means of accomplishing the same goals.  Some systems are more complex than others, and some are easier to predict than others, but ultimately they all get the job done.  However, if the mechanics become the focus of the game, then you risk losing the role-playing elements: the story, the characterization, the interaction, etc.  A good game, to me, is one that allows the players to focus on the role-playing and immerse themselves in the story without have to worry too much about the numbers (but the numbers still need to be there or the players won't be able to act appropriately).

So what does all of that mean to you?  Probably nothing.  Feel free to digest and either savour or expunge as fits your fancy.

Okay, I'm going back to drowning myself with coffee. 

Glenn