Sigil

[Paul Czege]

Hey James V...everyone,

I've been thinking seriously about running a scenario using Sigil. I even bought wood cubes at a craft store over the weekend. But I'm worried about play-balance related to a couple of aspects of the rules:

1) Because there's no constraint on how a player adds Misses to their pool of Sigil dice as part of the ongoing game, it makes sense for them to add each Miss to a new blank die. In this way, they dilute each Miss with five free blanks and still don't negatively affect their ability to get the single Hit they need for success.

2) And following that method, if through improvement they make a die with six Hits on it then they've really optimized their chance to be successful. They've diluted the Misses with blanks and guaranteed at least one success.

Hmm...maybe that's not so bad. A single Miss could cancel out that Hit. I suspect crafty players will find themselves working toward making a series of dice with six Hits, at the same time as they have a growing pool of other dice with one Miss and five blanks each. I'm definitely going to have to play this to see how it works out. Although I'm not thrilled with the idea of a player who's making a Favored roll for task resolution being able to select a single die that has six Hits on it.

Am I missing something?

Paul

[James V. West]

Thanks for looking at my game.

Warning: the rules for Sigil are untested, and in first draft. I cringe at the number of typos that must lurking in there...

1) and 2): you've found the chink in the armor! Actually, in the initial hand written version, I stated that a die MUST have at least one Hit and one Miss. Why I didn't include that in the onlnine rules is beyond me. So, that's an offical rule. I'll add it later :wink:

If you do play these rules, I'd love to hear what happened. Also, as I don't want to be dubbed the "generic system guy", I hope to desing a cool overall game using the Sigil system. In fact, the name itself will likely be the overal title of the game. I've been kicking it around in the back of my brain for weeks now.

Likely, the rules at this stage are full of holes. Let me know how many you fall into.

Later

James V. West

[Paul Czege]

Hey James V,

a die MUST have at least one Hit and one Miss...

How does this work, for instance, when the player's been given his first Hit beyond the Newt? Does he have to save it until he has a Miss before he can start a new die?

Thanks,

Paul

[James V. West]

Hmmm....

Let  me rephrase:

Max Hits per die: 5
Max Misses per die: 5

How would that work?

Actually, I need to re-write the Sigil rules...make them clearer.

Jvw

[Paul Czege]

Hey James V,

Max Hits per die: 5
Max Misses per die: 5

It allows for something very close to the original situation I described, players diluting all their acquired Misses by attaching each of them to a new die, and of creating a bunch of 5-Hit, one Blank dice. The difference is that with a Favored roll, they select one of their 5-Hit-one-Blank dice (rather than a 6-Hit die) and still have a 1 in 6 chance of getting a GM determined result. Still, that's not so bad a situation at all for a Favored roll, I'm thinking. Hmm....could be worth a playtest.

My other thought was requiring that every new die be started with a Miss, but that means a player would have to save up Hits until he earns a Miss, and I'm not sure I like that idea so much.

With your solution, even with the 5-Hit-one-Blank die for Favored rolls, there's always a 16% chance of a GM determined outcome. You might have to have a working policy that a GM determined outcome could be anywhere between a measured failure with minor consequences to a partial success. You'd have to reserve dramatic successes and flukey failures to legitimate Hits/Misses. Whaddya think?

Paul



[ This Message was edited by: Paul Czege on 2001-07-24 22:43 ]