Diceless or Dicealicious?

[Bert]

Hi Sir C,

I'm thinking free and fun.

As for customisable tokens and dice, I've just bought a bunch of blank dice from my local game shop and an indellible marker. This will allow me to customise the dice I plan to use in Free Will. I'm going to replace the cosmic balance tokens with dice and modify the divine favour mechanic, giving me a 2 die-type dice pool mechanic. I'll post where I'm at shortly.

Bert

[Bert]

Hi Sir C,

This is most definitely for fun, so I'd be looking to distrubute it for free if I can get it looking ship-shape. If it kicks off a few ideas for other people that would be great - if people play it, that would be fantastic.

On the subject of customised elements, I've just bought a bunch of blank dice from a local gameshop and an indellible marker, so I can make customised dice for the evolving dice pool mechanic.

I'll be posting an update of where I'm at, along with some more questions relating to ideas I've had, very shortly.

Bert

[Bert]

Following some sage advice, a little resistance on my part, some good ideas and a fair bit of thought, I've reached the next stage in the development of Free Will. I think this system is more coherent than the earlier 'water-testing' system. If feels like its going in a very specific direction, rather than being a nebulous brain fart. I think what I have now is game that makes use of diceless and dicealicious mechanics as integral aspects of its function. Wujick, you are my god.

Here's the state of development is at present:

ABILITIES
Character abilities range from 0-8, with 4 indicating a well developed ability
Non-zero abilities are associated with a Role
A role is an occupation, pastime or lifestyle (Fixed list? Free form? Not sure.)
Example roles include: Warrior, Carouser, Peasant, Strongman, Noble, Sorcerer, Hermit, Bodyguard, Sailor, Practical Joker, Hunter, Musician, Merchant etc.
The score indicates talent, training, experience, exposure, practice, passion etc.

TRAITS
Abilities are modified by traits, which provide bonuses or penalties
Some traits are positive, providing a +1 mod (perceptive, fit, resilient, disciplined etc.)
Some traits are negative, providing a -1 mod (clumsy, weak, frail, dull-witted etc.)
Modifiers from all relevant traits are added to an ability score
Traits are relative: a character with a role like Strongman (6) is going to be a hell of a lot stronger than a character regarded as 'Strong' - for a sailor, peasant, cook - or whatever.

ACTION RESOLUTION

BASIC SYSTEM
The basic action resolution system is diceless.

Contests
GM states difficulty score (okay Dave, you win), highest score wins. Difference in scores is proportional to the consequences for the loser. Ties result in extended stalemate.

Challenges
GM states difficulty score. If your ability score is higher you succeed. Difference in scores is proportional to degree of success. If your ability score is equal to or lower than the difficulty score, the result depends on the type of challenge.

For Hazardous Challenges, involving risk to life and limb, only a 4 point shortfall will result in outright failure with a fatal conclusion. For lesser shortfalls you will suffer graded consequences proportional to the shortfall and have to overcome a secondary challenge to avoid outright failure.

For Harmless Challenges, involving no risk to life and limb, equal scores indicate partial success. If your ability score is lower than the difficulty score, you experience outright failure.

SUPPLEMENTARY SYSTEM
The supplementary system is a based on a dice pool mechanic. A player may choose to employ the supplementary system if their character faces outright failure, unacceptable consequences or simply needs to enhance their performance. There are two types of dice a player may have in their pool.

Balance Dice (The Cosmic Balance Mechanic)
If you need to boost your performance for a specific action you can take a number of Balance Dice (thanks chronoplasm!) from the pot obtaining a one-off bonus equal to the number of dice taken, which is added to your ability score. You cannot have more than 4 balance dice. When resolving an action in which you do not take at least one Balance Die, you must roll all of the Balance Dice in your pool. Every die that comes up 1 confers a -1 penalty and goes back into the pot. Balance dice tend to hang around for a while.

Favour Dice (The Divine Favour Mechanic)
All players start with a number of Favour Dice. These must be a different colour to Balance Dice. Favour Dice offer potential bonuses. If you need to try and boost your characters performance, you roll a number of Favour Dice. Every die that comes up 1-3 provides no bonus, but is retained. Every die that comes up 4-6 provides a +1 bonus but is lost. While the number of favour dice in your possession is not capped, you cannot roll more than 4 at any one time. Favour Dice tend to burn away fairly quickly when used.

So that's the state of play at present. Is this now looking like a stable, workable action resolution system?

While that question is out there, I'd like to pose another. This system, like many rules-lite systems and practically all diceless systems, is rather coarse grained.

In the same way as I've been toying with fusing diceless and dicealicious mechanics, I've also been considering fusing high resolution and low resolution mechanics. I quite like low resolution mechanics, but I find my players like to have some means of gradual, incremental improvement.

What I propose is that instead of ability scores ranging from 0-8, I have ability scores ranging from 0-80, but only differences in whole multiples of 10 count for something.

Following this approach a character with ability score (AS) 45 ties with a character with AS 54 but loses to a character with AS 55. If you have a character with an ability score of 37 trying to accomplish a difficulty 60 task, they fail by 2. Modifiers from traits or pool dice are still unitary, representing the number of tens your score changes by.

The way I figure it, this system means that a small increase in your ability score can really count for something, but you still get the ease of use associated with a low resolution system. Or do you? Is this system workable or just plain fiddly-in-the-head.

Bert