Drawn out conflict

[MikeF]

First time poster (though occasional lurker - this is a truly excellent site that reignited my interest in dice), so apologies if I've got my terminology wrong or this is the wrong place to post this...

I'm trying to put together a not-quite 1920s pulp / sci fi. A bit Flash Gordon, a bit Danger Patrol, a bit Spirit of the Century. Arch villains are the Sultan of Mars and the Prussian Secret Service. You know the sort of thing: magnozeppelins; brains in jars; the square jawed men of the Space Cavalry; Giant Venusian Flytraps; and fighting alien invasions by giving them the Common Cold.

I've been toying with various different systems. I like The Pool for it's simple, admin-lite qualities, but I don't really enjoy the binary nature of the win/lose conflict resolution, or the way that stake setting seems (at least the way I play it) to interrupt the flow of a scene. I worry that the stake setting is sucking the dramatic tension out of the roleplay by removing the surprise if things go wrong, and I worry that stake setting becomes inconsistent. Inspired in part by Wushu Open I've been mulling over an alternative system:

- Players get a dice pool (d6s), and a handful of traits.
- When a conflict arises, the players state what they're trying to achieve.
- The GM then sets a 'drama level' for that conflict. This isn't a difficulty level, more a sign of how important the scene should be for the story as a whole - kind of a measure of how much of a pivotal moment this might be, whichever way it goes.
- The players then - Wushu style - describe how they go about attempting to achieve it. Everything happens as they describe it - the only limit is that they can't describe the actual resolution. So they can describe shooting the arrow or sweet talking the Princess or climbing the wall - they just can't describe killing the Martian, or getting the marriage proposal, or reaching the top of the cliff. At this point the Players roll a number of their dice pool *up to* the level of the appropriate trait. They can roll a number below this if they want, or if they don't have enough dice.
- Every 5 or 6 they roll is a Success, and reduces the 'drama level' by 1.
- If they don't get any Successes then they lose a die from their pool.
- The conflict is over either when the player reduces the drama level to 0 (in which case they get to deliver a Wushu-like Coup de Grace describing the moment of success) or when they either quit or run out of dice.
- If they fail a conflict then the GM dictates a consequence which is guided by the scale of the remaining drama level. In it's simplest terms this might be a reduction in an appropriate trait score equal to the remaining drama level, or the imposition of an appropriate weakness of the same level.
- I haven't figured out a way of restoring dice pools yet. The best I can come up with is to let the GM refresh pools after significant scenes, but I'm not very happy with that.

What I think this system might do is to utilise the idea of stakes, but without making the players decide the exact nature of the consequences in advance - it just shows them how the GM rates the scale of their gamble, rather than the detail of what happens if they fail. I also like this because it seems to offer the possibility for two or more contradictory conflicts to take place at the same time. The hero might want to kill the villain AND win back the heart of his lover in one scene, but if these two are made into separate conflicts, with separate drama levels, that take place at the same time, then the character has to decide which to gamble on. They could kill the villain but lose their lover, or vice versa, or they could both. However I'm not sure whether that's really going to be a factor in the games I'm running. Finally it might allow conflicts to take place over a longer period. A specific conflict ("I want to get rid of these bad dreams I keep having about failing to save my buddy from the falling Magnozeppelin") could be given a drama rating that the player tackles periodically over the course of an adventure.

My question is - am I just making a system for the sake of it, when actually something like Wushu, or Fudge could actually handle all of this perfectly adequately? If so, how can I regulate the stake setting so that it is consistent without outcomes - once decided - being predictable and uninteresting for the players? If on the other hand you think there's some potential in my idea, does anyone have any suggestions for ways to improve it? How could I restore dice pools, for example?

Any thoughts hugely appreciated.
Michael.

[Bastoche]

I probably can't help much but I could that I'm currently thinking about something similar. I thought of points to spend (free successes) instead and the points would be gained in the following way: The characters have some traits (positive qualities in the sense that they help acheiving/succeeding at something) and some flaws. To get points back, you get a stake, WIN the roll and then invoke a flaw to counter the roll in order to get points. It makes the player choose what to lose. It's the price to win (later) by gaining/regaining points. They key point here though is that the roll must to won, you can't jusst avoid to roll to get the point.

[Murrquan]

Flaws sound like a good way. You might want to impose some limit, though, like only being able to tap a given flaw for more points once per scene.

How about starting players out with a large pool, which slowly diminishes as they work their way through the scenes, and an option to tap a flaw once per game to get more. Then, at the climax, they get points added to their pool to make things extra-dramatic? If you want you could tie how many points they get into the Drama level of the final scene.

[MikeF]

Thanks both for your ideas.
Bastoche - interesting, though it sounds like your system is actually going in the opposite direction to mine. You seem to be getting the players to set the penalty, whereas I want the penalty to be a surprise for the players, but for them to still have a sense of what they *might* be risking. Have I understood your concept properly?
Murrquan, thanks, I do like the flaws idea as a way of restoring dice, but again I'm still struggling with a way of quantifying penalties that allows me to (a) surprise the players whilst (b) ensuring the GM is fair and consistent in how consequences are imposed.

Looking around I've just stumbled on In Spaaace! by Greg Stolze - http://www.gregstolze.com/inSpaaace.zip - which I think might be getting much closer to what I had in mind. That system rewards failure, but imposes costs on the players if they succeed. If they *only just* succeed then the costs are even greater. The great thing with this is that the costs are absolute. If a player risks a number of tokens to win a conflict then the GM ends up with those tokens which can be used to visit a consequence on the player either straight away or later. The consequences could be anything, but the potential damage to the PCs can be directly proportional to the stake they laid. It seems to remove the GM fiat that worries me with my current model. Weird that I said this site has reawakened my interest in dice, but I end up raving about a diceless system. Anyway, I'm going to explore that a bit more and see whether I need to either import the good bits of In Spaaace into my game, or whether it's already good-to-go for what I want to achieve.

Thanks,
Michael.

[Bastoche]

The GM sets the "penality" by being the one who states the stakes: he formulates the conscequences of failure, while the player sets the conscequences for success. The players choose wheter they succeed of fail which is slightly different than having the players set the "penalities". That being said, in the system I'm working on, the GM sets the stakes before  rolling the dice. You could do it the other way around which would be QUITE interesting:

The players declare what they want to "get" they do not know what will happen if the roll fails or not. To gain "experience" (renew the pool), they must choose to fail at some point not knowing what will happen! May not not appropriate for your game but I think I'll add that feature to mine