Thinking out loud. Input appreciated.

[HDTVDinner]

Okay, so I was getting all jazzed up after ordering Piledrivers and Powerbombs, and started thinking about how I would handle a wrestling match in my own way. This led me down a path to come up with a more general purpose system that I think would be neat, it just needs a bit more to it. here's what I'm looking at.

The main ingredient would be momentum. I'm thinking of using it as sort of like iniative except for the fact that the person who has the highest momentum score not only would get to go first, or defer, but would also be the causing the action of the scene. Everyone else would be reacting to his move. Now in the event of a lopsided match up , if one member of the group decides to engage the solitary adversary, or vice versa, the rest of the group would be able to take actions, instead of only reacting. Once the round is over everyone except him would reroll their momentum, and he would increase his by one. If anyone overcomes his momentum they gain the momentum. In the event of a tie all those tied reroll their momentum die.




As far as stats go, I'm thinking of classifying the three major areas of interactions one would normally engage in a role playing game.
Physical
Mental
Social
Each of these would be subdivided by an Active score and a Reactive score. I'm thinking of just having a base set of scores that all charaters would start with to apply as they see fit. I'm thinking along the lines of 6,5,4,4,3,2. So on the character you would see something like...

                         Active    Reactive
Physical                6             4
Mental                   4             2
Social                    4             3

Now lets say for instance Blugar the fighter guy, Liddy the plucky thief type, and Milalele the hurler of magic destruction decide to face off against the rubbery skinned troll. Everyone rolls up their momentum dice (d12) first rolls look like this Blugar 8, Liddy 2, Milalele 4, Troll 6. Blugar decides to charge the ugly mug standing before them. "Charge!!!" BLugar is Acting physically, and his Physical acion score is a 6. This means that Blugar Rolls 6 Action dice (d6) and gets a sum of 21. Troll then makes a defense roll. He is reacting to a physical action, and has a physical reaction score of 5 so he would roll 5 reaction dice (d6) and gets a sum of 20. Curse the troll would take some type of damage (unfortunately I have yet to come up with a damage system yet.) Now it is Trolls turn. He is reacting to Blugars initial action so when he flails his club like arms he can only roll his reaction dice. Troll rolls another sum of 20. and Blugar would roll his physical reaction dice as he is reacting to Trolls reaction. Blugar's physical reaction score is 4 and he rolls a sum of 16 so Troll is able to put a hurting on Blugar. Milalele is up next and decides to hurl some sort of nastiness at
Troll from her magical repertoire. She will be using her mental action dice due to the troll is currently engaged by someone else. She decides to shoot a firey blat at Troll and rolls her 6 mental action dice and gets a 14. Troll in turn rolls his physical reaction dice again due to the spell attempting to cause physical damage. Troll rolls his 5 d6 which sums up to 30. Yahtzee!!! No damage for Troll on this turn. Liddy decides to sneak around back and try to stab Troll in the foot. Again Liddy will roll her 4 physical action dice and gets a total of 12 and Troll rolls a 12 for his physical reaction dice. Liddy fails to beat Trolls score so Troll escapes another brush with pain.

New round.

Blugar had the momentum last round so he flips his d12 around to show a 9 to indicate his new momentum. Everyone else rolls new momentum dice Liddy rolls a 5, Milalele rolls a 10, and Troll rolls a 12. This round would then start with the troll attempting to exact a bit of revenge.



So, first question would be, does this put enough of a focus on momentum? I am planning on getting together a list of special effects type stuff that can only be used if someone maintains the momentum from round to round, so that will add importance to it. I also realize there are no fleshed out skills or talents or classes yet, and no damage system. How does the whole momentum/action/reaction system sound? Any suggestions?

Thanks for checking it out!

[GregStolze]

Blugar had the momentum last round so he flips his d12 around to show a 9 to indicate his new momentum.

When I read this first, I misunderstood.  I thought you meant he'd invert his d12 and show the number on the bottom of it.  (Which, if he'd gotten an 8 would be a 4, right?  Wait, no, a 5.)  But then I thought, it might be fun if the mo-holder adds one to his roll, but everyone else inverts.  So the harder you screw the pooch on your first roll, the more likely you are to steal it after the flip.  This does kind of stick you if you're in the 6-7 region, but at least you're acting predictably.  And if you roll that initial 12, you're just going to keep barreling higher and higher.

-G.

[HDTVDinner]

Now if I'm understanding you everyone who does have the highest roll would flip the dice to show what the number on the bottom is. This would be kind of nice, but the problem would be, in the case of Blugar he would only ever have an 8 or a 5. If the Mo-holder (I love it.) rolls a twelve, it would be impossible for anyone to ever capture the momentum back. In a one on one situation this would be bad, unless of course the Mo-holder also flips, but at that point I feel it becomes a bit pointless. Also keep in mind ones momentum score would cap at 12. so there would be no additional plus ones for someone with a twelve, allowing someone to roll a twelve on a subsequent turn, and force a reroll of the mo-holder.

[chronoplasm]

What if the reactive characters can use the active character's momentum against them?
Picture this: The Troll charges at characters to try and gore them with it's tusks. The characters simply move out of the way. The Troll has built up so much momentum that it is unable to stop so it runs into a wall.

[apeiron]

Chrono, i really like that.  If the mo-holder is on a run of several victories in a row, they might wear out, or become cocky.  In wrasslin that happens all the time.  The big bad is pummeling our hero who then takes advantage of the villain's speed and size, and of course this happens at the most dramatic moment and way possible.

i like the flipping the die idea, i've never seen that before.  It might suck if someone owns a non-standard die.   

[HDTVDinner]

Just to clarify I am using the idea of psychological momentum like you would see in a sports event. Think of a wrestling match, or a College football game. The better you do builds up to make you do better and better as you go, but if something shifts the momentum you have to work that hard to get it back. here's a link that would clarify further.
http://www.athleticinsight.com/Vol8Iss1/Momentum.htm

Now to adress your question that would definately be an idea I've been contemplating as a sort of "class-building block". I'm thinking maybe for Liddy the plucky thief type maybe when deciding her stats the player decides Liddy needs to be the quick, agile, swashbuckling type. I could see that being represented by a higher physical reaction score the physical action. Maybe there would be an effect that would allow someone to cause an amount of damage if succesfully beating an adversary's physical action, kind of a counter attack of sorts.

I would also like to work in a way that if the Mo-holder fails something bad enough, or an adversary finds some kind of advantage against him the momentum could definately swing that way as well. I'm not sure how to build this in quite yet. obviously it would not be any kind of Mo-holder special effect. unless the mo-holder possibly would make a roll to use his special momentum effect, and fails. kind of the equivilent of botching a high risk manuver. I like that. Maybe taking a page from In a Wiked Age and say if some one is reacting against the mo-holder and doubles the mo-holder action roll that could constitute a possible change in momentum, and force a reroll next round?

[HDTVDinner]

Thaks for all the help so far, While I haven't used anything wholesale, I got a lot of good ideas that I kind of mixed around to get a good start on mechanics for conflict resolution. If you want to check out my current partial outline check it out here.

Now on to the next fiddley bit. I want some kind of internal conflict system. You can see it on the outline there. I'm thinking of some kind of system where the character would have 3 internal Qualities.

Motivations (What the character is trying to accomplish)
Beliefs (Their world view so to speak, black and white, shades of gray, etc...)
Secrets (Actions by character that conflict with beliefs)

The Idea is that the GM would sort of use this as a tool kit to come up with internal conflicts with the character, and also let the gm be able to play the little angel or devil on the PC's shoulder during these scenes. I guess the main think I'm looking for is some examples of beliefs one may have, and  some help coming up with a reward/punishment system  that would make it mean something. Thanks again for all the ideas so far!

[HDTVDinner]

Pardon the laziness as I just copy and pasted this from RPG.net but it definatley has some ideas in it that could take off.

Not that I would ever take advice on beliefs from evil Spock, but That is sort of what I was thinking maybe some kind of Karma system for effectivly narrating inside your beliefs, but what about penalties or secrets. I'm not married to any of the internal conflicts as of yet. I'd rather have nothing than something that just takes up space.

I'd also really like to have some sort of end game mechanic I really like driving towards something and nowing there is but finite time to reach that goal. would it be possible to work this in with the internal qualities?

Maybe a motivation system as simple as... What would you die for? I mean thats pretty simple right? that should give the GM a pretty black and white picture of what the character wants.

Then the belief system could be a series of questions like: Is morality a question of black or white, or many shades of gray? Do the ends always justiy the means? Do two wrongs make a right? Is there such a thing as a victemless crime? Is it a crime if you dont get caught?

[HDTVDinner]

So here is a link to an updated draft.

[HDTVDinner]

While I havn't had the chance to put any thing else on paper yet a few things have been bouncing around in my brain.

• What does a mental interaction look like? I'm thinking it would be possible to use this kind of action or reaction in a social conflict if the player would rather lean on his brain power, rather tongue power. or maybe as a way to handle feints and "Jukes" in combat. Of course it would be the go to stat for magical goodies, but is that enough?
  
  
• Does this sort of classless system need some kind of "Perks" system or effects system to give a character a class-like flavor? I'm really thinking no. I dont see the point of having a classless system that feels like it has classes. I feel that would only set up unneccesary roadblocks and put focus on what you cant do rather than what you can do.
  
  
• Another brainstorm that has erupted from reading Piledrivers and Powerbombs, including a nemesis system. When creating characters the player would also create the characters nemesis. name, stats, story, the whole shebang. This would be a great way to kick start the seeds of a campaign.
  
  
• I'm also pondering the Idea of high-risk maneuvers. It started as once a character has momentum for a few rounds, they can sacrifice possible damage to themself, in order to possibly do greater damage to thier target. I guess I wondering if this risk/reward would be great enough to actually entice the momentum holder to risk it.  Would it be better to allow him to bid points off of his momentum die to get a reroll on one of his dice? Like if he has a momentum score of 9 and botches his roll, getting two 1's he could spend two points of momentum to reroll them. I think I kind of like that...
  

Wow. thats a lot. I really appreciate all the feedback so far and would love for anyone who has some sort of different take on whats going on here, to let me know.
Thanks again!
Ryan

[opsneakie]

I've been thinking about how you present momentum a bit, and this is my thought:

So, one combatant captures the initial momentum, right? As long as the Mo-holder (also love it) does well, his momentum increases and increases, and he does better and better. But once he messes up, have his momentum drop drastically, maybe to 13-his momentum on the round he lost. So the closer he was to 12, the harder he would drop. If you lose the momentum at 7, it's no biggie, but when you're at the very peak of your ability (momentum 12), you drop hard. So 12-->1, 9-->4, 7-->6, etc.

Maybe this could give you a mechanic for momentum shifting and having the ability to break someone's momentum (C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!)

This seems like a really great idea, keep developing it.

-John.

[HDTVDinner]

Wow thanks. I was really thinking everyone thought it was lame. I'm working on a flowchart right now to figure out how everything goes together. The thing I've really been beating myself up over is this, I have all these great ideas for what should be a fun system. I need to come up with a setting that captures this and runs with it. I dont have a problem with standard fantasy, but I would want to focus on just a few aspects of it and really try to bring those to life.

[Bastoche]

3 things:

- I really like the basic idea for the mechanic
- I REALLY like opsneakie's approch to it
- A suggestion of mental oppostion roll: A chess game. In terms of typical Fighter-Rogue-Wizard fight context, It would gravitate in the "tactics" direction: For ex: Having the troll back pedal toward a cliff. Or having him move so that is corner itself, etc.

[HDTVDinner]

3 things:

- I really like the basic idea for the mechanic
- I REALLY like opsneakie's approch to it
- A suggestion of mental oppostion roll: A chess game. In terms of typical Fighter-Rogue-Wizard fight context, It would gravitate in the "tactics" direction: For ex: Having the troll back pedal toward a cliff. Or having him move so that is corner itself, etc.

First, thanks!
Second, I really think it would be good if there are no momentum rolls. As it stands, momentum is rerolled after every round for everyone but the mo-holder. I'm thinking it would be good if momentum is established and then everyones score is maintained. If the character succedes in an attempted action, it increases by one. If he fails it decreases by one. If he fails big time, thats when the 13-current momentum could come into play.

I think this may be handled by tweaking the rolling mechanics a bit. I've kind of been thinking about switching to a roll xd6 and count successes. I'm thinking 4, 5, and 6 for successes. If the mo-holder has less than half the amount of successes, then BLAMMO! no more momentum for him.

Third, exactly what I was thinking. say the fighter decides it would be better to corner the troll than inflict any damage on him. The fighter,who has momentum elects to roll a mental action. The troll, not picking up on it or not really thinking about tactics so much, rolls a physical reaction. If the troll gets more successes, he might hurt the fighter a bit, but since he did not mentally react to it, he is cornered.

[Necromagvs]

Hi H.

I was thinking in a few things to add to the discussion. Let`s see.

Mo-Holder has the momentum and attacks Bulgar, which uses his mental ability and uses Mo-Holder momentun to corner him. Then, Milalele goes next, she notice Bulgar plan and act accordingly, she cast a spell to make the floor behind the troll  slippery, the troll does not react since the spell was not directed at him, then liddy attacks the troll making him step on the slippery surface..

maybe milalele and liddy may have some kind of bonus to their actions since they follow up bulgar`s momentum?
also lets say the mo-holder has a companion, a little mo, that do think before acting and sees the trickery in bulgar idea and act to it, then little mo may receive the same bonus as the bulgar`s friends did...