Conflicted About Multiplayer Conflicts

[MKAdams]

I'm in the process of designing a "story-telling game."  The game is set in a generic European low fantasy setting that recalls Alice in Wonderland, the Wizard of Oz, and your typical Disney Princess movie.  Key principles for design are a) ease of play, and b) rewarding non-violent, non-looting motivations.

Conflict resolution is highly abstract, reflecting more of a narrativist perspective. Players roll dice equal to their attribute to gain success to overcome a difficulty number. Conflicts come in three forms: tasks, tests and trials. A test is a simple single roll win-lose, sometimes against a fixed value and sometimes against an opposed roll (a contest). A trial consists of an ongoing series of contested rolls called exchanges. The nature of the conflict determines the attribute used for resolving the conflict; heart for social interaction, body for physical challenges (combat), and mind for intellectual challenges.  Dice equal to attribute are rolled, and 5's and 6's are counted as successes.  Various special abilities give bonus dice, automatic success, include 3's and 4's as success, or otherwise alter the rules.

EX: A player with a mind 6 character in mind contest versus a mind 3 obstacle rolls 6 dice against narrator's 3 dice.  Each counts stars as successes.  An average roll for this exchange would result in 2 player success, 1 obstacle success, exchange goes to the player.

Characters and obstacles have condition tracks associated with each attribute/type of conflict.  Each time a character wins an exchange, she damages the opponent (moves it down its condition track).  When a character and obstacles reach the end of their condition track the trial ends and they lose the conflict and suffer some sort of loss.

Here's my problem.  The game is intended for four players, one narrator and three characters.  Some conflicts must necessarily involve all three players plus any number of narrator characters.  Here are the three options I've come up with so far:

Option A: When multiple characters participate in a conflict, the character with the highest relevant attribute is designated the "lead."  Other characters may "assist." Assisting characters roll before the lead, making a simple test against a set difficulty.  If they succeed, the lead gains either bonus dice or automatic successes.  Leaning towards this angle, but may leave players side-lined for important scenes.

Option B: When multiple characters participate in a conflict, each character rolls simultaneously and collectively compares their roll against a single roll of the obstacle.  The best result in the party is used.  I don't know why but I hate this idea.  Can't put my finger on it.

Option C: When multiple characters participate in a conflict, each character rolls independently and compares their roll separately against the obstacle's result.  The obstacle makes a separate roll against each character.  Each exchange is resolved independently.  This way leads to endless book keeping and the establishment of an initiative order, which makes Andy a sad panda.

Ideas, suggestions and questions welcomed.

[MKAdams]

Is there more details and information I could provide that might help me get some feedback?

[J. Scott Timmerman]

Greetings MKAdams,

I think a better answer for your game would come if you asked yourself what effect you would like the mechanic to have on the game.

Like you said, Option A might end up protagonizing one character over another.  On the other hand, it does seem to be the most cooperative option you have mentioned.

Option B is certainly the simplest of the three, and "ease of play" is one of your core principles.  Perhaps the reason you don't like this one is that it might seem like a roll, even a good roll, doesn't matter if someone else rolls higher? 

Option C almost seems like it's made for a different type of situation than the first two.  It seems even less cooperative than Option B.  Perhaps this would be better if you were going for a non-binary resolution; I.E., if the success/failure of each character mattered independently.

Some examples of what types of multiplayer conflicts would be showing up in your game would also be helpful.  I could extrapolate from the Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz and talk about what scenes come up in my mind as playable and important - but this game isn't for me.  Help us with a little info on your personal vision.

-JT

[MKAdams]

I think a better answer for your game would come if you asked yourself what effect you would like the mechanic to have on the game.

This really got me thinking, and I was surprised how hard it was to come up with an answer.  I had originally been approaching the problem from the GM's perspective, but the more I think about what I want from the game, the more I realize I have to go with Option C, and give each individual character's actions unique significance rather than having the whole party roll as one entity.

[David B. Goode]

Something you might consider is giving your players choices of how they'd like to face the challenge... say between option A and option B or C.

For example: PC1, PC2, and PC3 are involved in a Heart challenge against the King's guard - seeking an audience with His Majesty. All three PCs could attempt to give reasons as to why they should be allowed before the thrown - each making individual rolls against the guard (this could use option B or C). They may also choose to put forward a unified argument - PC2 presenting the points, while PC! and PC3 accentuate the points (option A). That way, if the characters each have high ranks in Heart, they can all take a chance to shine. Otherwise, if someone has low Heart, they can still be involved and even help (as opposed to being little or no help by trying to roll their own Heart against a target number they're likely to not hit).