[Uncanny Underground] Roll for Opportunity

[Marshall Burns]

Uncanny Underground is a game I'm working on about a world that coexists simultaneously, both in terms of space and time, with our own, normal, mundane world (although it also extends beyond it).  It is not a "hidden" world, at least not in the sense that it has been deliberately hidden and must be protected from discovery by outsiders or "normals."  Normal people simply tend not to intersect with it, although the uncanny may intersect with the normal world at a whim.  If a normal person notices events in the uncanny world, it is in the form of barely perceived sounds, shadows on the corners of vision, phantom tactile sensations (all of which can be written off as "my senses playing tricks on me"), or it is in a damaging, uncontrollable way (which is written off as insanity).  It is not a "true" or "higher" world; it is merely another world (and there are many others besides), no more or less valid than the world you and I know.

It is a world that is completely and truly uncanny, irrevocably magical by definition.  The physical and rational exist here only as a facet or emanation of a deeper, abstract "core" reality, and thus are susceptible to the same abstract influences that govern arcane phenomena.  Which is to say, all perceived existence (including space and time) is symbol and metaphor, and the core of existence is power and its expression.  For example, if someone gets shot to death, it's not a matter of a trigger causing a hammer to hit a firing pin, causing a primer to ignite, causing a bullet to fly down the length of a barrel into the target, causing damage to vital tissues, causing death; what really happened is that, by application of the power invested in the gun, the attacker defeated the power used by their target to maintain life, and as a result of THAT, a bullet flew from the gun and so on.  See, the perceived action of the gun was just a symbol for a contest of power.

In this world, power is virtue.  Power and its expression are the only things that are respected, valued, and admired.  Power is power regardless of the form it takes; electricity is power, the ability to conjure flame is power, a gun is power, money is power, influence is power.  Furthermore, all these manifestations of power are ultimately equivalent (i.e., of equal effectiveness), varying only in the manner in which they are expressed, and the application of any one can be stopped by just about any other, if the other is applied cleverly.

The people who inhabit this world are aware of all of this, and they understand it fully.  They are physically, mentally, and magically competent to incredible degrees.  To put it simply, these people do not screw up.  They do not have accidents, and they never miss unless someone causes them to miss.  They are not infallible, but they are impeccable; everything they do, they do it well, and if they know that they can't do it well at the moment they simply do not attempt it -- f'rinstance, they recognize that due to their position and the enemy's position, and wind velocity, and who-knows-what uncanny influences, that they would not be able to hit a shot (and they can process all this like you and I process breathing), they don't attempt the shot.

So, how to model a resolution mechanic for this?  It occurred to me that Karma was not appropriate because all forms of power are supposed to be equivalent, and a pure Drama system seemed like too much work.  I settled on Fortune because of this and also because I love Fortune for the uncertainty it introduces.  Since hit-or-miss is not uncertain in this world, however, "roll-to-hit" doesn't make sense.  What is uncertain here?  What you have the opportunity to do.  So there's the solution: roll for opportunity.  (As a side note:  as a general concept, "roll for opportunity" would also be, for my money, the only useful way to use Fortune in a game about super heroes)

I realized that, oddly enough, I had seen "roll for opportunity" in action before.  It was in the first RPG I ever played:  "Q": the Great Gathering by my friend Rowdy Small, back in middle school.  Rowdy's game was also about a world secreted in the modern world in which people wielded special and magical powers.  I lost all the information about this game long ago, but I remember that the characters' abilities were split into several categories (I remember "Abilities," "Elements," and "Lore," but there were others too), and that, when you wanted to do something, you rolled two dice, each of which was compared to a different table (between these two tables were split the ability categories, and also some general actions).  The results of this roll presented you with one or two opportunities, essentially, to achieve your goal. You never had a failed roll, unless you couldn't think of a way to use what you rolled.

And that's what I want to do with Uncanny Underground.  At first, I split the abilities (referred to as "Virtues") into six categories:  Action (stuff you do), Lore (stuff you know), Command (stuff you can cause to happen), Bond (relationships), Instinct (stuff you do passively), and Resource (stuff you have).  Then I came up with six Methods:  Strike, Avoid, Redirect, Cancel, Capture (power can be stolen), and Endure.  The idea was that you rolled two d6s, one for the type of Virtue and one for the Method, and that told you what your Opportunity was (f'rinstance, "Strike with Action" or "Cancel with Lore"), and you either use your Opportunity or you Allow whatever is happening.  I drew up a couple of characters and did some straw-dummy tests, and it turned out that I didn't like it at all.  There were far too many rolls that were useless (re-rolls are permitted by spending a generic resource called Karma, but they were required far too often).  I think this is partially because the goals always turned out to be too closely related to the Methods, such that the goal you could accomplish was heavily limited by what Method you rolled.

I think the way to go here is to divide up Virtues based on their source (body, spirit, weapons, relationships, etc.) and the nature of their effect, and have a table each for source and nature, rolled on after a goal is declared.  Once you have your two results, you can choose between them, or you can use them both separately (that is, use a Virtue of the nature indicated, and use a separate Virtue from the source indicated), or together (that is, the Virtue you use matches both the nature and source rolls) which would afford some manner of bonus (probably in Karma, which does a great deal of stuff).  Problem is, I can't decide how to divide up these two groups into specific categories; I'm not even sure if I want to stick with 6 each, or if I even want the two tables to have the same number of categories.  So, I thought I'd post here and request some brainstorming on this; how would you divide them up personally?  Also, to begin with, I was thinking that Virtues could be custom-defined, like DitV Traits, but now I'm leaning more toward a canonical list of effects, somewhat like Demon Abilities in Sorcerer, mostly as a check to keep the Color right.

Speaking of Color -- I haven't got a proper description of the Color just yet, because the game is inspired by a dream that I had once, so it's hard to communicate just what it is I'm talking about.  However, there is some stuff out there that comes pretty close or hits on some of the same stylistic beats:  the film Night Watch (Nochnoy Drozor) (the film version is closer to what I'm shooting for than the book), parts of the comic Hellblazer, the good bits of the film Constantine (yeah, yeah, I know, it has nothing to do with John Constantine, but I still kinda like it), the novel Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.  Basically, I'm seeing lots of big cities, and dark alleys, and neon lights reflecting off of pools of water in the road, and trench coats, and fast cars, and guns, and swords, mixed in with the subtle sort of magic that's sometimes confusing and kinda leaves you unsure as to what exactly happened (as in Night Watch, and also the book Old Nathan by David Drake, and the film Howl's Moving Castle), and cinematic fight sequences waged on physical, mental, and abstract levels that ultimately culminate with someone taking it on the chin hard.  Kind of Raymond Chandler in texture, anime and The Matrix in action, with an element of the abstract and uncanny pervading everything.

-Marshall