Binary Trait System

[Brimshack]

Okay, I'm actually quite a ways down the road on developing this one, but I am not convinced I've tapped the concept for all it's worth, so I'm going to pose the question here in the hopes that a little brain-storming can help me stretch the application into some new areas.

The Game: This is a fantasy heartbreaker. So, start with Tolkeinesque material and go from there. The game uses 3d6 for all essential rolls. Attack and Defense are opposed rolls with damage being the difference between them (modified by sundry skills, weapon stats, armor, etc.) The system is classless (though there is a sort of reverse class we are calling a career), with the option to buy Stats and Special Abilities, Moral Values (yes, these are purchased as the character progresses), and social relations, among other things. Morality is rather particulate and characters commit to specific value such as compassion, honor, or honesty long before they commit to abstractions such as goodness, order, nature, etc. There is a death Spiral (on a track of Physical Durability) as well as a Panic Spiral (on a track of Mental Durability).

The feature I am looking to develop more, my Trait system. Every character has a number of traits. Some are natural characteristics (enigmatic, fair, and wise for elves, for example). Some are values (compassion, greed, art, etc.) Gender, Age, and Social Class are Traits with limited applications. Color manifestation is another option, rarely taken, but a character can choose to manifest a power associated with a given color which she must then wear to keep the power going).

The kicker is that Traits are all arranged into opposed pairs. Fair-Brute, Compassion-Cruelty,Greed-Generosity, Stalwart-Vibrant, etc. Traits do not confer specific abilities though every ability, spell, language, and profession has a Trait. If you take one of these that has a Trait matching a Trait of your own, then you add 1 to your strength in that Trait. So, Characters tend to develop ability profiles consistent with their traits, but the tendency is just that.

What Traits do is they structure relations of Opposition and Affinity with other people and creatures, with the natural environment, and with magical effects of various types. Attacking an enemy to which one has a relation of opposition means you can hurt her worse on account of it (and she can hurt you worse too). Helping a creature to which one has a relation of affinity means you can help them even more. Conversely, moving through a stretch of territory with Traits opposed to yours means the very land wants you gone (the river may want to drown you). Moving through territories with which one shares a Trait means you heal faster and suffer fewer random problems.

(Special Note: Consistency is not an assumption in this system. There are many ways in which characters may embrace contradictory characteristics: We had someone once roll up the equivalent of a Paladin for one of our campaigns. As a fun twist he chose "evil" as one of his Traits. We interpreted that to mean that his lineage had been sullied by the crimes of an ancestor about 5 generations back. So, he could behave in a good manner all he wanted, but he still carried the traces of an evil lineage.)

So, ...I have several applications of this sub-system worked out. We have it in the combat system and we have it in the environment, various other features of the game, magic items, etc. Ultimately, I am looking for ideas to expand the relevance of this sub-system. So, this is a general request for ideas and thoughts on the subject at hand. I know it's a general question, but I'm not trying to solve a specific problem. I am trying to re-brainstorm the concept and see if anything turns up I haven't already tried.

I am grateful for any suggestions folks may have to offer.

-Dan Wall
Crunch-Waffle

[JoyWriter]

My goodness "heartbreaker" is getting over-used! If you know your game is an incremental improvement, surely it's just an incremental improvement! But that totally unimportant digression aside:

Your traits seem to open up possibilities for a multi-dimensional level system: In D&D3, the fact that things are based on character level not overall level makes multi-classing weak without patch feats and prestige classes. On the other hand your system allows you to patch together different but related classes with their levels adding, like a mix of D&D and WFRP.

So looking at it from a saves and bonuses perspective, it looks quite good, and it means that your system could exhibit a property I really like; higher level means more exaggerated. In other words, the situations get more fine tuned, with less room for error at high levels, which is good given the assumption that newer players start at the start. It also creates a sort of "intro to fantasy" idea, where the setting gets more dramatic and mythical and symbolic as time goes on, starting with random people surviving/helping their families and town.

Have you considered having affinity and opposition work in different ways? It would mean that you could trigger both at the same time if you have contradictory stats, without just having them cancel out. This preserves that "more traits means more drama" idea. For example, you could remove the "affinity means less problems moving through terrain" and turn it into something about alliances. This would mean that every time you move through a wood you bring war there! With some people coming out of the woodwork for you and others against you.

On another note, which you might want to put somewhere else, do you have get-out clauses on the two spirals? I was just playing necromunda and I was struck by how useful the "bottle" system is: You chose when you loose a fight, and when your opponent starts gathering momentum you can either duck out early or stick around in the hope that you can invert the situation. It turns a death spiral into a gamble, in a really satisfying way.

[Brimshack]

Thank you for the ideas.

I'll take another look at  the term, 'Heartbreaker' before I use it again. For the moment, I'd rather focus on game stuff.

The core use of application for combat is bonuses that can be applied by spending a limited allotment. A player gets a certain number of Opposition bonuses based on an Aggression Stat and a certain number of Affinity Bonuses based on a Focus Stat. We tried a couple other methods, but we settled on Allotments. The main virtue is that they enable a player to decide when she wants this extra layer of detail to matter. It also requires a player to name the Trait she wants to use as the basis for a Bonus, which requires some attention to the Characters around her and use of Role Playing to determine the likely Traits for NPCs and outright enemies. There are spells to tell some of this, but it's also fun when a player attacking or helping a major NPC hesitates a moment, looks up and names the right Trait.

Opposition: An opposition Bonus (+5 lethality, i.e. damage added in the event that the attack is successful). Considering that most characters have somewhere between 15 and 30 Durability points, that is a substantial bonus. It can be raised in various ways and Characters can stack up Opposition at increased costs (triggering 1 bonus costs 1 point off an allotment, triggering to costs 3 points, etc.) At high levels characters fighting the BBEG will try to rack up huge bonuses. If triggering multiple Oppositions, they must be based on different types of Traits (Natural, Moral, Gender, etc.).

Affinity: An Affinity Bonus is a +3 Bonus to Healing and other Benign magic effects (Duration of a Quickness spell, for instance), and PRIMARILY an addition to an Aid Bonus. The general rule here is that if one is within 1" of another character making a roll, she can elect to Aid the other Character, thus adding half her own modifiers for the roll in question to the one for the other Character. If a Character declares Aid and then triggers an affinity Bonus, she adds 3 to the bonus she is already providing. ...So, helping other characters is powerful, and when helping someone like you, it's VERY powerful. Just as with Opposition, this can be stacked up if you can generate enough Relations of Affinity and spend the extra points for it.

There are of course abilities that enable a character to tweak the affinity and opposition bonuses, just as one might take other bonuses for tactical considerations (+3 Lethality when flanking, charging, etc.). Manifesting the color white enables one to find a basis for Affinity with anything. Manifest Black means you can find a basis for opposition with anything.

For the environment, part of what I had in mind was that a campaign might begin in friendly territory (the shire is home to the hobbits, and they do very well in this, their home, even evading very powerful undead who would most certainly have found them had they not been hampered by the power of the shire.) ...and end in hostile territory (heading into Mordor where the air itself is poison to the spirit. Nevermind the orcs. Here the land wants you dead.). Please pardon the hokey example, but hopefully it gets the point across.

On Mixing the Good with the Bad: Traits generally don't cancel out, but the bonuses and penalties do apply in different ways so they can both occur at the same time.

One example would be the good "Paladin" with "Evil" as a natural Trait (because of a family legacy). A terrible event occured, causing the whole world to become evil for a week. During that time, he suffered a -3 on all die rolls, because, his good spirit was oppressed by the spirit of the time, but he gained a bonus of +3 on all healing done to him, because his latent evil quality thrived on it somehow. ...and of course the player had fun playing out the psychological consequences.

Another example: magic item might look like this:

Axe, Great +5: Cruelty, Stalwart.

If a Character has one of those Traits, she adds 1 to the effective bonus. She also adds 1 more for each time she can divide the weapon into a Stat called Spirit. She can raise the bonus to the point of doubling it. If she has a Trait opposed to one of those (Compassion or Vibrant), the still gets full normal bonus, but then she takes a penalty equal to the bonus of the magic item on all other rolls (until the axe leaves the party entirely. If she uses it once, she keeps the penalty until the weapon is no longer available in any way). Now, let's say a character is a Dwarf (which has Stalwart), but nice enough to take Compassion as a value, then she gets the extra bonuses for the Trait she shares with the weapon but the penalty that goes for Opposition. As a general rule I have been trying to follow similar rules with other aspects of the system.

Not sure about an early exit for the spirals. I haven't played Necromunda, so I'll want to look the Bottle system.

You can run, but you trigger Free Attacks unless you attack one attack first. BTW, you can get hurt when you attack someone, if you roll lower than they do, so it's quite a dilemma when you know your beat. Most times players that take a few points of Fatigue penalties will go on Total Defence (adding their Speed which normally translates to number of actions per Turn to their Defence) and pray for an ally to come help them. One desperation tactic that is available here in Melee anyway is a Haymaker. You roll 1d6 and triple it's value instead of rolling 3 dice. Unfortunately, this means you take double damage if you Botch the attack. ...it's tough to get out of a fight once you start to lose.

[Brimshack]

Sorry, I wasn't clear on the weapon issue. If you share a trait with a weapon, you get extra bonuses on the attack rolls using that weapon. If you have a trait opposite to that of the weapon, you get a penalty equal to the basic modifier on all rolls other than attack (including defences, task rolls, etc.). If you have one in common and one in opposition, then you get both the benefit and the penalties.

[JoyWriter]

Glad to hear about the trait complementarity, that's exactly what I was talking about, extended to encounter selection; perhaps people with some traits in common with Mordor could try to find allies of a kind there? I also like the solution that the feature only matters when it helps someone, it's a good way to avoid gotcha-ing someone, and seems to be emerging as one of those design pattern things.

I must admit that I found the addition of gender a little dodgy; are you expecting to give people bonuses for fighting the opposite sex?! Also I couldn't quite get the spirit thing, I that a WOD-style power stat?

I recognise the "free attack" mechanic from D&D, but not necessererally from real life! In my imagination (affected by GW games no doubt, plus some scatty historical knowledge), the advantage of fighting a fleeing opponent is found in the charge mechanic; you can run and attack to charge, but not if you just want to run. In fact in such games fleeing can be quite effective if done at the right time, and tactics must be used to trap people, like surrounding them etc. Having said that, missile weapons allow you to hit a fleeing guy just as well as a stationary one, if not better as your mate isn't in the way any more, so a bow or fast horse is still a pretty good deterrent to running.

But if you actually let people run from combat, then you have to be sure that they have a motivation for getting into it in the first place. One of the things I like about necromunda is that although it is primarily a combat game, you constantly size up leaving the game as a serious consideration, as persistent effects can be too great to continue. But because thanks to terrain, clever tactics or luck you can defy that death spiral and come out to win, but still at a cost. The incentive system is good old experience, plus other things depending on the type of game, and the disincentive is a risk of permanent injuries (not strictly, but removing them is so unlikely they basically are permanent).

In your rpg the incentives are likely to be more story based, but by making the sticking out in a loosing combat be worth something (as it is with all CR type experience systems) you can hopefully make even the basic battle an interesting decision, let alone with the story elements added.

But combat is the easy one, how does the other death spiral work? Can it run in non-combat situations? I suspect the equivalent in investigation type situations would be "drop the case before you loose it" vs "I must find out what happened".

In other news, how have you been finding a multi-action system? I've found in some games that maximising speed is akin to maximising air-time, and those with more actions have a serious advantage. How do you avoid that problem in your game?

[Brimshack]

Thank you again Joywriter. I appreciate the thought you've put into your comments, and it's helping a lot.

On Gender, yes, I do see the danger of a Trait that would link everyone in one way or another (except perhaps for the 4-gendered Kindred). So, it is a very limited application. It affects "Mind Affecting Spells" and persuasion effects such as Intimidation or Rally (but not 'Aid'). In practice, I'm not sure anyone has triggered a Bonus based on Gender yet, but I can envision a character build or two that could focus a great deal on this Trait and the subsequent relations it generates. Gender strikes me as the sort of thing that should be significant for the Trait system (and opens lots of options to play with specific character concepts), but how to construct it is another matter.

On the multi-action system, extra Speed certainly does enable some characters to get more air time than others, but in practice I don't think it's been a problem. One reason perhaps is that Characters can spend extra actions on bonuses to a roll, and extra actions resulting in die rolls normally incur a penalty with each successive roll. Spell Casters often cast all the way through several rounds so as to build up major bonuses when they finally finish (a tactical option which creates lots of wonderful dilemmas ...how long can I stand here mumbling before an enemy gets to me?). Fighters usually opt to use as many actions as necessary to find a good opponents and then burn excess Actions on 1 or 2 hits. There are a couple combat builds (archers and a tasmanian devil type creature, we have been calling a "Waggamaeph") that emphasize multiple attacks, and these are really deadly ...to grunts. So, players running low-Speed characters seem fairly content so far. So, much so that the issue has not been raised in discussion. Reading your post though, I am running different scenarios through my mind. I am quite sure that it may become an issue -under the right (wrong) circumstances.

Experience Points: I have been keeping this very simple. I assess the danger posed by an encounter (either combat or role-playing ...some NPCs carry the potential for TPK, these strike me as significant threats even if they never do start swinging). Then I assess the relative success of the party. The increments are:

Threat Levels: Minor, Moderate, Major, Epic

Degrees of Success: Evaded, Loss, Draw, Victory, Decisive Victory.

Experience points are assigned for each encounter with ascending values, so a Major Threat is worth 0 if you Evade it, 1 if you engage and lose (which could include, btw, getting told 'no' on an important point of role-play), 3 if you engage and come up as a Draw, 6 if you engage and win, 10 if you win to such a degree that you resolve problems meant for later sessions.

Which brings me to role-play, I have actually been avoiding the use of dice to resolve social interactions. Dice can be rolled to assess knowledge of matters and to maintain a credible ruse. Otherwise, an NPC is given a motive or two and success or failure depends on what the players say in-character.

The Mental Spiral is essentially a panic feature. 0 on Mental Durability and you either stand paralyzed in fear or run as fast as you can. In practice it adds a dimension to combat leading players to focus mental attacks on enemy you can't physically hurt. It's also more dynamic than Physical damage. Anyone can intimidate and anyone can rally. So, while Physical damage goes up or down as a result of focused attacks versus healing, Mental Durability flies up and down as players become more or less scared.

One thing to note: The game discourages reaching 0 in either Durability stat. If you panic completely, you will take a point of Malaise. This is a penalty to healing done for you as well as Vulnerability if struck by certain creatures. If you drop from physical damage it is very hard for others to heal you at that point, and when they do, you will take from 1-3 points of Malaise. Malaise points can be bought off with Experience Points once they have played out in a game session. So, they are tactical penalties that can be converted into experience penalties at the discretion of the player.

On running: Thinking about it now, this is the legacy of the original Skirmish game. Our intention then was to increase the deadliness of the system and place substandard melee fighting characters in a really vicious dilemma. Attack and run or take your chances for another round (probably while on total defense and praying for someone else to come help). It is not intuitive though. As you point out, running should not be a terrible option, at least not if realism is a goal here. I think I am actually going to try a game session with a more liberal running-away rule. This will require some rewriting of the Free Attack rule, but I want to see how it works.

[Brimshack]

Going back to the Trait system for a moment,the prospect that a party member might find allies in Mordor (and maybe thrive on the poison air ...golem, perhaps) is part of what I have in mind. On the one hand players can maximize Affinity Bonuses by making a heterogeneous party, but that increases the chance they will eventually end up taking serious penalties at the same time. So, having a little bit of a mix is an advantage. If the orc is uncomfortable in the elven forest (cause everything from the trees to the insects are leaving their mark on him, ...and he's catching a bit of a cough), well the elf is just fine. Run off a couple sessions and head into the wasteland where the elf starts to get green in the gills and the orc is relishing the moment. I am also trying to develop a ritual system (not the 4e variant, I mean literally Initiation rituals, tea-ceremonies, beer-ceremonies, swapping coats with a stranger, sun dance, sweat bath, ritual combat, etc.).

Rituals always feature a Trait and challenge die rolls. Characters possessing a relevant Trait for a ritual will do better than those that don't. This should encourage players to mix up the Traits a bit and develop a distinct set of challenges other than combat.

...sadly, this seems to stay on my to-do list.

[Brimshack]

Rackinfrazzits! Nothing like saying the opposite of what you have in mind,

Homogenous

A Homogeneous party maximizes Affinity Bonuses. A Heterogeneous party maximizes the odds that someone will be up to any particular challenge//.

[JoyWriter]

Providing multiple actions are balanced in a way that recognises their multiplicative effect with other stats, or have some progressive minus like in your system or the recoil system in shadowrun, I see no problem. Actually, I'd say that your system is better than Shadowrun's, as it applies to all actions, not just shooting. Well there can be other problems, similar to those expressed in the initiative thread earlier this year (warning, big!), but I mean that this avoids the machine gun/drumroll effect. You've solved it pretty much the same as I did, although my multi-action penalties are more severe, and serve as the only balancing factor for multiple actions, with no relevant stat!

On evasion, have you considered making evasion an alternate challenge in itself? I am reminded of the thief games or Metal Gear Solid II, where I think there were bonuses or awards of some kind for non-lethal play (not sure about that). Avoiding the problem can be a challenge in itself, but it is obviously of a different style, with the obvious problem of how to judge it; am I avoiding being run over by a buffalo right now? As far as I can tell, but I don't expect a particular bonus for it! D&D does it by awarding experience for skill challenges, such as a specific stealth scene, leading to the interesting samurai-like effect that people may keep a foe around because they keep them on their toes!

But perhaps this defeats the point, which is using the experience system to get player characters to face their problems, and so be more heroic, even if they loose. I think there is a lot of value there, providing there is always possibility to lose in ways that do not involve instant death! I suspect GMs may need a little advice on that given the traditional prevalence of no-quarter ruthless hoards!

[Brimshack]

Interesting. I'm going to give my immediate thoughts now, but I don't think I'm done thinking about your last suggestion. My experience categories use combat as the default model of an encounter, but they also apply to role-playing and non-combat challenges.

So, thinking about it this way. The party encounters a random Titan. Realizing both that they cannot possibly defeat it, and that this particular Titan is likely to attack them, they decide to hide. This goes down as an "Epic" encounter with "Evaded" as the result. They get 1 experience point each for it, which they have earned. Successfully avoiding the big danger is an accomplishment, not as much as somehow defeating it after all (10 Experience Points each). But it is an accomplishment of a sorts.

Now, what would make ducking the thing more central to a larger challenge? If there was a goal behind their conduct, if they needed for example to get past the Titan for some reason (say he is a guard of sorts). Now ducking and hiding is no longer simply evading the challenge. It is meeting the challenge, and that challenge is still dangerous. They might actually accomplish their goal without fighting the Titan, but it would still be a Major victory, perhaps even a decisive victory. It would be epic if I seriously expected TPK and somehow they pulled it off and got what they wanted after all. ...anyway, point is that the GM has to decide in some sense what the goal is (or rather, he has to acknowledge the party's goal) and assess the relative danger the encounter poses and their relative success in accomplishing their goals. Ducking out of a random encounter is just that, but ducking as a means of accomplishing a goal would be a very good thing to do.

Perhaps, I should design a game where the players must use skill-challenges and avoid a fight to get what they want.