Is there a "Power 19" equivalent for Game Mechanics?

[SteveMND]

I have seen numerous references to the Power 19, which as I understand is a checklist to help you define and expand your game development.  However, most of it appears to be pretty much based on setting more than anything else, so I was wondering if there was a suggested 'checklist'' when developing a particular set of game mechanics for a game?

[Warrior Monk]

I just went through the power 19 on my game and it helped me a lot to develope the mechanics; after all, mechanics are always designed to fit the best way for conflict resolution in a determined setting, for determined kind of stories, type of players, lenght of each game session, etc. Yey the only way to get to know more about mechanics in general is by playing a lot of games... or searching a lot through this forum. I remember I found long a go a pfd about rpg design, I believe someone of this forum wrote it from all sugerences of the members and personal experience? Perhaps is posted here somewhere...

[Abkajud]

Hi, Steve!
The Power 19 doesn't focus on setting very much; instead, it asks broad but mechanics-related questions such as "what are the goals of play?" and "how do your mechanics achieve these rules?" Setting concepts are a dime a dozen, and that's a fairly common sentiment among veteran posters here at the Forge.
Not that an awesome setting isn't a great thing to have on hand, but the mechanics are what make it a game, rather than a novel or something.
The Power 19 is a starting point, it's true; but until you feel like you have answers to all 19 questions, you definitely still have some basic-level work to do on a game's design.
What's nice is that you don't need answers to all the questions to start designing, or even to start playtesting your rough-draft concepts. Think of it as a checklist you want to complete as the game develops, something that would be good to complete in its entirety before, say, publishing your game. Some questions, such as "how do you reward the player-behaviors you seek to elicit?" (I'm paraphrasing), may be really hard to nail down, and seemingly esoteric, for quite a while into the game design.
Hopefully this helps!

[Luke]

Checklists are kind of bunk. They're really only good for making answers to checklists.

There's no one right way to design a game. But the best measure I've found for a game is whether or not it works in play. You have a vision for your game. Are the mechanics supporting that vision when you run it? Are they supporting it when other folks run it?

If yes, then you're done. If no, then you need to tweak until you get double yeses!

-L

[SteveMND]

They're really only good for making answers to checklists

Well, that may be true, but still... oftentimes the fact that something is on a checklist that you hadn't considered before means that it gets you thinking about new aspects that might have never been explored.

The Power 19 doesn't focus on setting very much

I guess we have a different view on setting then; all but two or three of the Power 19, in my eyes, are about the characters and the setting.  I guess what I mean is most of them focus on "why would the characters do X," whereas I'm looking for suggestions on "How would the characters do X?"  Like a primer on mechanics -- how do bell curve die rolls (3d6) versus linear die rolls(1d20) affect things, what sort of mechanics and resolutions are common to various game approaches, stuff like that.

Honestly, the game I'm working on will never really be intended for publication or anything, it's just something I thought would be interesting to do.  So many games out there have aspects I like in their mechanics, and aspects I don't, could I come up with a system that incorporates all the stuff I like, and avoids all the stuff I don't?

So far, I'm liking where the mechanics are going, but playtesting is starting to point out some retroactively-obvious holes in the game I had completely missed, and I was curious as to if there were any mechanics-specific articles or archived posts, etc. that might be good reading material to get me to thinking about some of these before they pop up in playtesting.

[Wordman]

Like a primer on mechanics -- how do bell curve die rolls (3d6) versus linear die rolls(1d20) affect things, what sort of mechanics and resolutions are common to various game approaches, stuff like that.

What follows is sort of a sideways answer that takes a while to get to the point...

A while ago, I solicited questions on what people here wanted to know about probability. I asked this in some other places, as well. I got a number of useful responses, here and elsewhere, but one of the most common desires was for The Formula: that is "I have mechanics that work like so, how do I figure out the magic equation that tells me how probable an outcome is".

The trouble is that, with a few exceptions, The Formula doesn't really exist. Probability doesn't really work that way for any but very basic cases. Usually, the closest you can get is a long list of "sub cases" that cover tiny subsets of the outcome space, that you then need to mix together in various ways. Often, it's just easier to skip The Formula and enumerate all the possibilities with software. Sometimes this space is so large that you can't do this in reasonable time, and have to make good guesses (usually with Monte Carlo simulation).

The point? The point is that there really isn't a general "checklist" of how mechanics work, because the answer is usually "it depends". About the best that can be done is some sort of "toolbox" of tricks you can use on various "styles" of mechanics. (For example, using "pools" of dice pretty much always needs some kind of combinatorics, while adding dice up usually doesn't.) I guess that is what you are really after. I don't think such a thing exists, though.

On the other hand, the point of the post I linked to above was to get ideas for creating a sort of "primer" on this kind of stuff, so maybe asking specific questions in that post might get you the answer you are looking for.

[otspiii]

Really?  I took all of the "why would the characters do this?" questions to be pretty mechanics-related.  The reward systems your game has, or even just what actions have the most in-depth rules attached to them, go a long way towards determining the way players approach any given problem they're faced with.  Your mechanics should flow pretty naturally out of whatever style of play you want to encourage.

The thing about mechanics that makes them hard to discuss like this is that they're pretty simple until put into actual use.  Large dice and small dice pools encourage randomness, while small dice and large dice pools keep things somewhat predictable.  You can have single target numbers that need to be hit, or you can go by a success based system, or you can build your own system of tracking success.  Complicated rules provide more rule-play joy buy less story-play joy.  Anything purely dice-related you build, unless obviously flimsy, is hard to critique until it's actually put into action.  Most dice systems stand by themselves pretty decently, it's only in the context of the rest of your game that they either mesh or fail.

[Abkajud]

Good points, Misha.
I particularly agree that the Power 19's focus on reward systems ties very heavily into mechanics: whatever sequence of randomness (or not) that a game uses to establish Credibility, it's where you go from there that makes the game yours. Basic example: in Sorcerer, the modifiers provided by good description and exciting ideas make a much bigger statement about the design than the actual "roll these dice" rules do - it makes a statement that players should try to be exciting, fun, and act like they really care about what's going on in the game if they want to succeed.
This is not to say that the crunchy bits of a game's mechanics aren't important - the botch mechanic, at least in older versions of World of Darkness, has often been accused of messing up bigger dice pools, ironically making them more likely to botch than smaller-sized pools.
Something to do with "no successes and at least one die that comes up 1" is problematic; I'm fuzzy on the details, so I refer you to http://firan.legendary.org/index.php/Dice_system#Problems_with_standard_Storyteller for a more detailed explanation.
So yeah, Steve! None of this is to say that the dice mechanics (or cards, or what-have-you) aren't important; but the context you create for them is crucial, too - it encourages and discourages certain play styles, sometimes unintentionally.
A lot of that gets hashed out in playtesting, thankfully. If I may, I would suggest using a basic mechanic that you enjoy, and going from there - I always enjoyed the World of Darkness dice pools, but frankly, the "roll d6, 4+ succeeds" method in the Warhammer Fantasy minis game was even cooler, so I took a little of both for Mask of the Emperor, resulting in "roll (stat+skill)d6; 4+ succeeds".

[Warrior Monk]

By reading all posts here I think we can actually start to narrow this to a few questions:

-How much of the conflict resolution in your game depends on randomness?
Perhaps you won't even need dice if it all comes down to comparing characters numerically, or if players tell each one their version of the outcome in turns. Diceless mechanics might be even more varied and useful than we tend to give credit for. I've seen one based in how much is left in the glass of beverage of the player. Anyway this also determines the need of character stats or if it will all come down to traits or a mere description.

-How much credibility you want in your mechanics and in which aspect of the game are those mechanics focused?
Abkajud just said the key work here: Credibility. There's a tendency for rpg creators to stick to the system they learned first and/or enjoyed the most, however is true that games focused in different aspects must have mechanics according to them. For example a game focused in battle may have complex mechanics for tactical battle but just one skill to roll whenever it all comes down to social skills; then you could have a game where the inner conflict of the characters is what matters and so mechanics are focused there instead of the battles. Conflict resolution mechanics could be the same everywhere in the game but would definitely be more fitted to simulate the main point of the game.

-How many possible outcomes you need for each conflict? How many degrees of sucess or failure you need?

I'm thinking on it like this: If you just need two possible outcomes, you flip a coin. If You need three you use...
i dunno, a rounded half of 1d6, If you need 4 options then it could be 1d4 or two coins, and so on. It all depends on the
amount of possible random outcomes you want to allow for every conflict.

Of course, from up to 2 possible outcomes -most of the time and just for the sake of the narrative- we are talking
about degrees of success or failure, where the numbers just help the one in charge of narration decide how's the
outcome going to be told. Is it a partial success? The outcome of the conflict is so astonishing all witnesses go blind?

-How many chances of success you want to give your players?

In games where the fun part is dying (like paranoia) or going insane (like call of ctulhu) perhaps you would like to keep chances of success low. When you need to make the odds look impossible you can also try a small dice pool or just rise the difficulty. Anyway, as the chances of success for the players become lower, the challenge becomes more interesting... until the players start to feel they are being asked to do an impossible roll to accomplish something interesting in the story. Despite how unfair the isues on some systems may look -like WoD, sometimes- chances are kept low for the sake of fun, actually.

-How often in the session these chances may change?

This adresses not only to characters gaining levels but to how and why modifiers to rolls or chances to re-roll o other mechanic to affect probabilities are applied in the session. It may not look like a big deal, but then at first glance some of the power 19 didn't look like it either.

Anyway, even I don't believe answering these questions is a must but it may help it you are out of ideas or stuck in the mechanics design. Hope this helps anybody!

[Abkajud]

Hey, WM!
You're absolutely right that gamers stick with whatever system first "imprints" on them - I know that it just feels weird to roll anything other than pools of dice, and I blame it on Warhammer and World of Darkness.
I think that the number of possible outcomes is not the only thing to model with mechanics - you're also giving players a reliable understanding of how to affect the degree of success in some way. Hence, Hero Points, etc.
That's where I'm at right now, actually - just rolling back and forth tends to feel a little humdrum, though I suppose part of the problem is a lack of importance dice rolls. Not quite sure how it happened, but it seems like, in the story we're telling, the players have gone from high conflict, to low conflict, and are going to be entering high conflict again. Without a bar fight or mugging on their way to the next informational scene (no conflict of interests in sight, RP only), as a GM I feel a bit like "nothing's happening". That's a real reversal for me: as a player, I tried my hardest to stay away from dice-rolling, because it had little to do with what I found interesting about the game.
But anyway, I'm rambling

[Warrior Monk]

Actually no, Abkajud, you aren't rambling!

Probably a few of the previous questions I posted won't matter if we consider that fact that you just mentioned:
-How many times in the game you care to interrupt RP to roll dice?
this could be the most important question to answer, really, since all RPGs are about creating a story somehow. Bringing resolution mechanics into the game is like adding a game of chance into the narration of a story. The randomness increases the unknown variables in the story as it gets created, but rolling too many times actually slows down the story a lot.

Of course, this factor also depends on the players: when the story looses speed due to players distracted in small aspects of the setting, you can always be two rolls away from throwing them in a fight or a main event in the story. That way rolls help to keep the story interesting sometimes. So it all becames a matter of balance between storytelling and resolution mechanics. I believe both should be interesting and simple enough to keep all players busy.

[Selene Tan]

I started writing up some questions, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like a fool's errand. The questions I came up with are somewhat biased towards traditional games -- it's hard to find ways to word the questions that are clear but don't automatically rule out some of the stranger, more interesting mechanics found in indie games.

But, I thought someone might find these questions useful, and they might spark some interesting discussion, so I've decided to post them.

Some notes:
- When I say "players", I mean "everybody who is involved in playing this game". This includes the GM if your game has one.
- These questions are focused on "resolution mechanics", and don't go (much) into reward systems, character creation, or anything else.

The questions:

1. How often do you want players to use the resolution mechanics? You can answer this in a couple of different ways:
   1. In terms of real time ("once every X minutes")
   2. In terms of number of uses per session
   3. In terms of number of uses per some relevant unit of play, e.g. "roll for conflict once per scene", "about 8 combat encounters in an adventure"

2. In what situations do you want players to use the resolution mechanics? Some sample answers:
   1. When the characters get into a fight
   2. When a character performs an action that might fail
   3. When one character is opposing another character's actions
   4. When "just roleplay it" has led to a stalemate between the players
   5. When the players want to add randomness to spark creativity
   6. When the scene has reached a climax
   7. "When someone feels like it" -- this answer avoids the question. In what situations should players "feel like it"?

3. How long should it take to use the resolution mechanics?
   In general, the more often you want players to use the resolution mechanics, the less time you want each use to take. One exception is when using the resolution mechanics is the main point of play, e.g. when playing D&D 4e as a miniatures combat game.

4. What can be determined using the resolution mechanics?

5. What can be determined in one roll? Or whatever your equivalent is if you're not using dice, e.g. card draws, bids.

6. What subsystems, if any, are there?
   Combat is the most common subsystem. You may want to go through these questions again for each subsystem!

7. What affects the outcome of the resolution mechanics?
   1. What resources do players have that affect the outcome? (For this question, characters and all associated attributes, items, etc. of the characters are resources too.)
   2. What resources always affect the roll? (e.g. Attribute and skill values always affect rolls in a "Roll Stat + Skill + die" resolution mechanic)
   3. What resources must be activated by the player? (e.g. Some games have Karma Points that can be used to add a bonus to a roll, but the player has to declare s/he is using them.)
         1. How and when can a player choose to activate these resources?
   4. What, if any, resources affect rolls but are not consumed or exhausted? (e.g. Skill values in a traditional "Stat+Skill+Die" system affect rolls, but they're not used up.)
   5. What, if any, resources affect rolls and are consumed?
         1. Which resources are permanently consumed?
         2. Which resources are temporarily consumed? (That is, some action on the player's or character's part will restore them, e.g. sleeping recovers spells in D&D.)
         3. How can players gain more of these resources?

8. Which players are involved when the resolution mechanics are used?
         1. If the resolution mechanics primarily concern one or two players, can other players affect the outcome in any way? How? (e.g. some games let other players "assist" in tasks, or spend their bonus points to give the main player a bonus.)