Can winning by too much be a bad thing?

[J Tolson]

[lumpley]

Hey Joel.

It seems like a good idea to me.

Any game mechanism you choose is going to have both its immediate, obvious, concrete effects, and also effects that arise from its interactions with the game's other mechanisms and the game's players. I can't predict without trying it - without trying the whole game - whether this mechanism would piss players off. Depending on how the rest of the game works, it might always, it might occasionally, or it might never.

Have you playtested? How did it go?

-Vincent

[Callan S.]

I would have thought the investment of energy into it IS the cost - it means latter on you can't do something else, because you invested your energy into whatever.

Though I grant the causal link might not be obvious, so perhaps writing down large energy expenditures and on what, then latter on writing down what they missed out on, would show the bigger picture of cause and effect here/some story (whatever your shooting for).

[J Tolson]

[Callan S.]

If your working on tension at the table, how long will it be in RL time before the negative outcome of an 'overkill' win (so to speak) shows up?

I'm just thinking of my own history and seemingly others of "Oooh, something bads gunna happen" but, like, time passes and it never happens, or happens after such a long time I've forgotten about it/all sense of tension has faded as much as the memory.

[J Tolson]

b]Andrew (player): Having survived the hardships that the gods have thrown at him, Odysseus finally makes it home.
Valentine (player):<Peter (gm): That sounds like a challenge to me. Are you willing to back it up?
Val: Yeah. If I win, Odysseus gets lost again.
Andrew: And if I win, he finally gets home.
Peter:<Peter:<Andrew: Meh, at least I get what I wanted. *ahem* Harken now to me, fates above and below, hear me tell of Sharp-Minded Odysseus. Hear me tell of his voyage and how he left that ill-fated island. Hear me tell of his voyage home, the wrath of the god he offended now dulled. Eagerly he and the bronze-kneed Greeks scanned the horizon. Eagerly they looked for that long-remembered shore. With shouts of joy they spot it, with leaps of joy they gaze upon their home.
Val:<Peter: Many they are, more than what men you have left. It is impossible to retake your home by force. But fate is not done with you, you will have no rest. An old servant sees you approach but the light of recognition it not in his eyes. You have been gone so long, no one remembers your faceAndrew (player):[/b] Having survived the hardships that the gods have thrown at him, Odysseus finally makes it home.
Valentine (player):<Peter (gm): That sounds like a challenge to me. Are you willing to back it up?
Val: Yeah. If I win, Odysseus gets lost again.
Andrew: And if I win, he finally gets home.
Peter:<Peter:<Andrew: Meh, at least I get what I wanted. *ahem* Harken now to me, fates above and below, hear me tell of Sharp-Minded Odysseus. Hear me tell of his voyage and how he left that ill-fated island. Hear me tell of his voyage home, the wrath of the god he offended now dulled. Eagerly he and the bronze-kneed Greeks scanned the horizon. Eagerly they looked for that long-remembered shore. With shouts of joy they spot it, with leaps of joy they gaze upon their home.
Val:<Peter: Many they are, more than what men you have left. It is impossible to retake your home by force. But fate is not done with you, you will have no rest. An old servant sees you approach but the light of recognition it not in his eyes. You have been gone so long, no one remembers your face.

[Keith Sears]

The main "problem" I can see with this is that the system you are emulating is extremely predictable. Gamers are more likely to hunker down and spend cautiously in order to get an unspectacular win rather than get a result that blows up in their face.

If the points spent were something of a karma system with a random element to it that could give the player a concrete reward for a spectacular result or punishment for a bad result, they might find that exciting,

I've been working on an idea I call the Luna Engine that works on a similar idea as yours.

[Warrior Monk]

It has the feel of a 21 card game for me. It's a good thing that players get to allocate their resources against each other and on top of that they can't spend too much or their sucess comes with some bad events mixed.

The only problem might be that players get to allocate a precise amount of resources, that's what it makes partially predictable the way players will tend to spend their resources. What if their resources came in the form of a pool of varied sized dice instead of a fixed amount of points? the good part of that is that you can resolve the conflict in less steps, the bad is that it might turn everyting into pure luck -depending on how you read the dice. Perhaps a failure on a d10 is still better than a failure with a d4 or even a critical success with it.

This is a practical solution, but the part of your system that I like the most is the allocation of points being kept secret until the confrontation; it's like a poker game. What if the other player is bluffing and hasn't allocated all his points on this conflict? is he making me waste my points now so he can defeat me easily after? Should I be spending more points so I can vanquish him now for good?

Another interpretation of overkill is what I use on another game: a critical sucess means same as always, double damage, spectacular results but on top of that it means the character pushed himself or his equipment too far: he dealt an incredible blow to his opponent but now his sword is broken, he managed to jump over a chasm but he smashed against the other side and now he's got to retake his breath before atempting to move again, etc.

[NN]

What if the loser gets credited with the victors 'wasted' energy?

eg
A: bids 2 points
B: bids 10 points
-> B wins, spends 10 points, but A gains say 5 points  (2 spent: 7 credited as overkill)

maybe "overkill points" have to be spent in a certain way, maybe the have to be spent against the player they were won from, and/or using the opposite stat to the conflict they were won on.

[J Tolson]

Ah, sorry for the long delay in responding.

Keith, while indeed this encourages players to hunkerdown, the fact that they'll always be bidding against another human individual makes this a difficult thing to do. They'll go for the tight wins, sure, but the number then need is unknown to them. Since there's free energy, that sort of gives a player an idea of how much energy they need to put in to win, but they have no idea what the human element will be. A cautious bet might still blow their enemy out of the water, or they might loose. Do you think I'm just underestimating the human variable?

Warrior Monk, you have a very good solution, but alas I am too emotionally invested to take it. Everything grew out of the fun I had playing a single session of MURG and getting rid of energy tokens and replacing them with dice is more than I can endure. Though to note, while players do get to allocate precisely, they also have "Luck" to try to account for. That is, after they allocate their energy, they still roll dice to add (or subtract) energy. This seems to sort of be along the lines of the variability you were going after with turning the tokens into dice. Is that a fair assessment?

NN, that's definately an interesting idea. I'll have to think over it more, but if I ever get the game actually finished enough to post to the interwebs, don't be surprised if that's included.

[Ar Kayon]

I only read the original post so correct me if I'm being redundant.  Using this mechanic, what kind of dynamics are you attempting to coax from the players?  How do you feel it will encourage meaningful interactivity?  I'm asking these questions because at first glance, the intentions of the system seem unclear:
1. The choice to diverge from RPG conventions (resources instead of dice)
2. The rationale; what your approach offers that conventions cannot.

[J Tolson]

The choice/rationale for this system has its roots in two different considerations.

First, in thinking about Conflict Resolution and how it attempts to mimic "real life," I came to the conclusion that most systems take the approach of natural ability + skill + luck = the result, with a heavy emphasis on luck. This emphasis usually manifests by a roll of the die/dice adding more to the outcome than bonuses. I believe that does not accurately reflect reality; the formula should be natural ability + skill + effort + luck = result. Additionally, while luck is an important factor in real life, often effort and skill are far more important, and thus I wanted to reduce the impact of luck on results. My "limited resource system" has each of these factors, so while I am diverging from stock RPG convention, it is by adding to conventions and readjusting the values contained in it. Since effort, however, is the one most under player control, it was the one that I focused on in my original post. Luck (that is, the roll of the dice) is still there, it just doesn't hold center stage.

Second, the game this system is for has players taking on the role of gods. It is fairly lackluster for Odin to attempt to create humans and fail because of the roll of the dice. Luck, for such a system, needs to be downplayed to promote a mythic feel. A god will usually do whatever he/she wants, unless opposed by another mighty force. Thus intent, rather than luck, seems to also be more important.

If a conflict resolution system focuses on dice, it focuses on luck. By shifting that focus to limited resources, I am trying to shift the game's focus to intent.

[Ar Kayon]

It can be done with dice.

There are ways to manipulate the dice to your advantage, so that luck plays a large role for the unskilled and a small role for the skilled.  In my opinion, finely manipulated dice have greater versatility than diceless alone.  However, your options aren't binary; instead of an either/or, you can mix the two for an effect I like to call "semi-diceless".

I'm not saying you should change your system.  What I am saying is that you may be underestimating the versatility of dice.  Have you ever heard of an RPG called Godlike?

[J Tolson]

While your system helps downplay the role of luck in conflict resolution, and it ties this to skill and circumstance, it seems to still ignore the "effort" component of conflict resolution. This could be combined with Warrior Monk's suggestion of making dice the limited resource, but the problem there is that once again emphasizes luck, whereas I desire to emphasize intent and effort.

Just to note, my system isn't diceless. Dice (and thus in turn luck), however, don't get center stage. Conflict resolution basically goes: "free energy allocated" (this comes from a character's skills/powers/circumstances), "limited energy secretly allocated" (representing effort), dice rolled and energy added or subtracted as appropriate (representing luck). The star of the show, as it were, is the middle step.

I haven't heard of Godlike, I'll look into it. Thanks.

[JoyWriter]

Solipsist has a system for handling overshoots (called exactly that in the game); you'll get what you want, but you'll get more than what you want, and probably twisted in some weird way.

In fact you should really look at Solipsist; it has a lot of stuff that seems to match what you're trying to do. Limits plus visions could probably be shifted to produce some of the features of beings like the Norse gods, but the standard characters are probably more powerful: They don't need to loose eyes to gain wisdom and understanding of the world, just say the have it! On the other hand perhaps the requirements of magic are just part of the justification of the change in terms of their vision (that'll make more sense after you know more about the game).

Also, "effort" often creates cycles, especially if you have the compliment of effort being rest that recharges it. Even if extra effort just forms a debt that fades away, this still produces lull periods. How would you incorporate this into your game? What will people do when their character's ability to change things is at it's lowest ebb?