Another diceless idea

[Don Lag]

This is an idea that sprung to me from reading the Diceless Resolution Mechanic thread (the initial post specifically). I'd have posted there but it seemed a bit off-topic.

I haven't fleshed the idea out too much, but I'm sure somehting minimally interesting can grow from the kind feedback of the Forge memebers :-)

Every character has a point pool. Where this point pool comes from should, of course, be related to the game objectives (GNS-wise).

All character's also have abilities that range from 1 to 10. 1 being best, and 10 being worst. 10 is also the default rating for any unlisted ability the character might recur to at any time (or this rather simmy rule could be dropped at the player's choice...whatever).

During character creation, every player gets character creation points and abilities would cost 10 minus rank (Cost = 10 - Rank):
a 1st rank abilities cost 9 points, a 3rd rank costs 7 points... a 10th rank costs 0 points. Or some other distribution could be applied (it should be fairly easy to figure out the "balanced" way to do that... I won't do it now though). Another scheme would be to hand out a number of each rank to use at will: everyone gets two 1st ranks, three 2nd ranks... etc.
Let's just assume there's a reasonable way to assign ability ranks to characters.

Now, the 100-so points I refered to originally are points to be used in-game not during character creation (although some mechanism for using a single class of points and merge PC creation into the actual game could probably be achieved).

These in-game points would be a reflect of the character's: karma, experience, "plot points", satisfaction with life .... whatever suits your Premise (I think).

As a resolution system, whoever scores the most "Victory Points" (or maybe "Fact points") decides the outcome/succeeds/narrates, in essence, gets whatever the game-defined Player-Character prize is.

A Victory point is a thing you buy with in-game points. Your ability rank is the conversion fee for "buying" Victory points.

Sample:

Hector has a Maim ability at rank 3, and 30 in-game points left. Eleanor has a Maim ability of 4 and 45 in-game points.

They are trying to hurt each other.

Hector's player decides to spend 15 points, that gets him 5 victory points. Eleanor spends 16 points, but that only gives her 4 Victory points.

Hector wounds Eleanor to some degree.

I can see this working better if the point expenditure is silently declared: written on papaer then simultaneously shown.. becoming an actual bet.
I'm not sure how math-heavy this would seem to most (it's pretty quick to me, but I'm very used to numbers. I can see it becoming hard to grasp to the less mathematically inclined).

A few stuff I like about this idea:
1) No natural limits on performance: I like it when a character is permitted by the system to have unlikely successes, either streaks of luck, or heroism or whatever. This system actually lets charatcer's plan their "heroic"/memorable/plot-decisive moments to a certain degree. There must be some sort of "normalization", this is... there must be a scale against which 50 in-game points is usual, too-little, too-much...

2) Similar to (1),  stimulates character focusing, but allows for polyfunction if necessary (at a cost) [that a would be e Sim-relevant attribute for the system I think].

Probably what both (1) and (2) come down to is that it seems like a very flexible system for distributing Authorial(?) power. Depending on the type of game, certain mechanisms for recoverying in-game points (and what their name would be: Action points, Story points, Plot points, Hero points...) and for assigning concrete Victory terms (levels of effect, facts to narrate, etc.) would have to be custom-tailored.

So, as a general idea, what does it look like?

[Whenever betting comes up in a mechanic I can't help but to rememebr the Amber diceless RPG Character creation system, this looks like it's evil twin... placing the bet in a different, yet related, role]

[Mike Holmes]

I think we have too little context to judge the mechanic. It sounds like it would work in general, but it wouold very much depend on a number of other things. What kind of refreshment mechanism for the pool, if any, for example?

Does the "losing" player lose his points as well, or only the winner (I assume the former)?

Mike

[simon_hibbs]

It seems to me that rating abilities as higher=better, and multiplying Plot points by your ability to give Victory points, would be an easier and more intuitive system. It would alose remove the ceiling on ability ratings, where 1 is the best possible rating (without having fractional ability ratings!)


Simon Hibbs

[Mike Holmes]

It seems to me that rating abilities as higher=better, and multiplying Plot points by your ability to give Victory points, would be an easier and more intuitive system. It would alose remove the ceiling on ability ratings, where 1 is the best possible rating (without having fractional ability ratings!)

Simon has a point. OTOH, however, the result of the success margins of such a system will be larger numbers in most cases. Depending on what sort of result you want, you will want to use the version that produces the sort of margins you are looking for.

As a correllary, the number of points in one's pool would also be much lower in Simon's system. Again, choose the one that fits.

Mike

[Christoffer Lernö]

Err... so how do you get new points??