Torchbearer: A Mythic Fantasy RPG (1st post, too)

[Jonathan Walton]

Here's the story I was talking about.  I'm not completely satisfied with it, but it's good enough to illustrate my point.  It's in a pseudo-R. Sean Borgstrom style, because that's just what I was channeling at the moment.

[http://www.100flowers.indie-rpgs.com/torch.htm">The Great Wheel Turns]

Later.
Jonathan

[Walt Freitag]

Okay, here's how it works out when you use d6 configured as (3 point, 2 blank, 1 ring) for all of the dice.

This isn't too bad. It start with a decay rate just a little steeper than plain Symmetry, such that 4 modifier dice give you a little over a 75% chance of success. However, the decay rate itself slowly decreases as you add modifier dice, so additional modifier dice have slightly less benefit. By the time you're at +8, the chance of success is .866 instead of Symmetry's .875.

Not a big difference, but keep in mind that plain Symmetry is a fairly fine-grained system to begin with. You need to be able to stack on a lot of modifier dice when necessary, if you're going to be requiring or allowing rolls in situations where the success chance is over 90% or under 10%. That's why I've extended the table below to 20 modifier dice. The number of dice might be an issue if you're dealing with special dice or asking players to mark dice. (But using d6s makes this a lot more practical! Especially with Jonathan's marking scheme.)

The normal/unusual success distinction is still a little broken, with the chance of unusual succss maximized at +1 and steadily decreasing as you add modifier dice (even as the overall chance of success is increasing).

Code:

Number of modifier dice = 0
  Any success 0.5000
    normal   0.0000
    unusual  0.5000 (but with zero mod, these are considered normal)
  Any failure  0.5000
    normal   0.3333
    unusual  0.1667 (but with zero mod, these are considered normal)
Number of modifier dice = 1
  Any success 0.5833
    normal   0.2500
    unusual  0.3333
  Any failure  0.4167
    normal   0.2778
    unusual  0.1389
Number of modifier dice = 2
  Any success 0.6667
    normal   0.3750
    unusual  0.2917
  Any failure  0.3333
    normal   0.2037
    unusual  0.1296
Number of modifier dice = 3
  Any success 0.7199
    normal   0.4792
    unusual  0.2407
  Any failure  0.2801
    normal   0.1651
    unusual  0.1150
Number of modifier dice = 4
  Any success 0.7623
    normal   0.5579
    unusual  0.2045
  Any failure  0.2377
    normal   0.1353
    unusual  0.1024
Number of modifier dice = 5
  Any success 0.7959
    normal   0.6215
    unusual  0.1744
  Any failure  0.2041
    normal   0.1133
    unusual  0.0908
Number of modifier dice = 6
  Any success 0.8235
    normal   0.6735
    unusual  0.1500
  Any failure  0.1765
    normal   0.0959
    unusual  0.0806
Number of modifier dice = 7
  Any success 0.8464
    normal   0.7168
    unusual  0.1297
  Any failure  0.1536
    normal   0.0819
    unusual  0.0716
Number of modifier dice = 8
  Any success 0.8658
    normal   0.7531
    unusual  0.1126
  Any failure  0.1342
    normal   0.0705
    unusual  0.0637
Number of modifier dice = 9
  Any success 0.8823
    normal   0.7840
    unusual  0.0983
  Any failure  0.1177
    normal   0.0611
    unusual  0.0567
Number of modifier dice = 10
  Any success 0.8964
    normal   0.8104
    unusual  0.0860
  Any failure  0.1036
    normal   0.0531
    unusual  0.0505
Number of modifier dice = 11
  Any success 0.9087
    normal   0.8332
    unusual  0.0755
  Any failure  0.0913
    normal   0.0464
    unusual  0.0450
Number of modifier dice = 12
  Any success 0.9193
    normal   0.8528
    unusual  0.0664
  Any failure  0.0807
    normal   0.0406
    unusual  0.0401
Number of modifier dice = 13
  Any success 0.9285
    normal   0.8699
    unusual  0.0586
  Any failure  0.0715
    normal   0.0357
    unusual  0.0358
Number of modifier dice = 14
  Any success 0.9366
    normal   0.8848
    unusual  0.0518
  Any failure  0.0634
    normal   0.0314
    unusual  0.0320
Number of modifier dice = 15
  Any success 0.9437
    normal   0.8978
    unusual  0.0458
  Any failure  0.0563
    normal   0.0277
    unusual  0.0286
Number of modifier dice = 16
  Any success 0.9499
    normal   0.9093
    unusual  0.0406
  Any failure  0.0501
    normal   0.0245
    unusual  0.0256
Number of modifier dice = 17
  Any success 0.9554
    normal   0.9193
    unusual  0.0360
  Any failure  0.0446
    normal   0.0217
    unusual  0.0229
Number of modifier dice = 18
  Any success 0.9602
    normal   0.9282
    unusual  0.0320
  Any failure  0.0398
    normal   0.0192
    unusual  0.0205
Number of modifier dice = 19
  Any success 0.9645
    normal   0.9360
    unusual  0.0285
  Any failure  0.0355
    normal   0.0171
    unusual  0.0184
Number of modifier dice = 20
  Any success 0.9683
    normal   0.9429
    unusual  0.0254
  Any failure  0.0317
    normal   0.0152
    unusual  0.0165

- Walt

[Shreyas Sampat]

Walt, thanks again for the math.  I think the fineness of the grain will be workable - like TROS, the modifiers will probably stack high for actions the player really, really wants to succeed.

About a year ago, Neranja killed Varashi's lover in front of her.  Now they're having another confrontation.  Varashi flares with Fuel, reversing her Vengeful Smoke, calling up The River Hears Her Cries and Voice of the North Wind, and turning up her Contrast to 6, adding up to 18 dice

Class... site update this evening.

[Mike Holmes]

For those who prefer tables.

Code:

      Success                     Failure
Dice   Any      Normal   Unusual   Any      Normal   Unusual
0      50.00%   0.00%    50.00%    50.00%   33.33%   16.67%
1      58.33%   25.00%   33.33%    41.67%   27.78%   13.89%
2      66.67%   37.50%   29.17%    33.33%   20.37%   12.96%
3      71.99%   47.92%   24.07%    28.01%   16.51%   11.50%
4      76.23%   55.79%   20.45%    23.77%   13.53%   10.24%
5      79.59%   62.15%   17.44%    20.41%   11.33%    9.08%
6      82.35%   67.35%   15.00%    17.65%    9.59%    8.06%
7      84.64%   71.68%   12.97%    15.36%    8.19%    7.16%
8      86.58%   75.31%   11.26%    13.42%    7.05%    6.37%
9      88.23%   78.40%    9.83%    11.77%    6.11%    5.67%
10     89.64%   81.04%    8.60%    10.36%    5.31%    5.05%
11     90.87%   83.32%    7.55%     9.13%    4.64%    4.50%
12     91.93%   85.28%    6.64%     8.07%    4.06%    4.01%
13     92.85%   86.99%    5.86%     7.15%    3.57%    3.58%
14     93.66%   88.48%    5.18%     6.34%    3.14%    3.20%
15     94.37%   89.78%    4.58%     5.63%    2.77%    2.86%
16     94.99%   90.93%    4.06%     5.01%    2.45%    2.56%
17     95.54%   91.93%    3.60%     4.46%    2.17%    2.29%
18     96.02%   92.82%    3.20%     3.98%    1.92%    2.05%
19     96.45%   93.60%    2.85%     3.55%    1.71%    1.84%
20     96.83%   94.29%    2.54%     3.17%    1.52%    1.65%

Mike

[Jonathan Walton]

Ahh.  Thanks, Mike.  That's much more readable to me.

The important numbers are (I think):

0 -- 50%
2 -- 65%
4 -- 75%
8 -- 85%
16 -- 95%

Which, just pondering a little bit, looks like a pretty decent spread to me.  In situations where you would have closely matched opponents and the spread of dice would be between -3 and +3, both sides have a reasonable chance of winning.  And it's only by rolling massive amounts of dice that you can really have an well-assured victory.

Honestly, I'm less sure about how to interpret the "Unusual" results, since they seem a little counter-intuitive...

Later.
Jonathan

[Shreyas Sampat]

Dang, just lost a long post on mechanics.  Well, try again...

The unusual mechanic might be the next thing going out the window.  Though I see a certain appropriateness in the slow reduction of frequency as bonuses rise, I'm not too excited about it, unlike the other mechanics, which I love.

This means that theoretically the game could be played with pure Symmetry, which has the benefit of not having to subtract rings but also the disadvantage of having multiple die types.  As it stands, one could run T with unmodified d6, reading 1 as ring and the numbers where all the corners are occupied - 4,5,6 - as point.


Some thoughts on the mechanics of activated Traits:
(I think I'm going to represent things like Fuel and Smoke Traces with glass counters or something like them, by the way; it seems the cleanest way to track rapidly shifting numbers during the game.)

Contrast: Characters with permanent Contrast greater than one can spend Fuel to reduce their Contrast (one Fuel per level of Contrast) for the duration of a scene.

Coals: A Coal is the term for an inactive Flame/Smoke pair.  For the cost of one Fuel, both Traits become active.  The Flame burns out at the end of the scene.  Whenever the Flame applies a modifier, add that same amount to its Smoke Trace.

Embers: An Ember is a thematic category from which Flames and Smokes can be created.  These can have a Contrast value, like that of Lanterns.  Unlike Lanterns, though, the Contrast of the Trait itself and the Contrast of the character both are successively (not simultaneously; 3 Trait Contrast and 3 Character Contrast add up to 9, not 5, total dice) applied to the Trait for the purposes of figuring bonuses.  It costs Trait Contrast squared to ignite a Flame from an Ember.  At the same time, a Smoke issues from one of the character's Embers; it need not be the same.  The Smoke has the same Contrast as the Flame does for the duration of the Flame, which burns out at the end of the scene.  Like Coals, Ember-created Flames incur Smoke Traces.

Smoke Traces: The Smoke from activated Traits sometimes lingers far longer than the heat it provides.  Whenever the Smoke Trace comes into play, apply the appropriate modifier and reduce the Trace by one.  When it reaches zero, the Trace dissipates.  (Yes, this means that Traces can create a lot of negative modifiers for characters that use Contrast indiscriminately.)

Example:

The sorceress Zaradia City-of-Ivory is at the Emerald Court, disputing a piece of land with Sicnifr Duke of Laain Tal.  They have seen fit to bring their case to the Kanj Emperor himself.

Zaradia really wants to win this, so she activates her Ember Beautiful and Terrible Queen to create the Trait Terrifying Gaze of Disdain at an intensity of three, for a cost of nine Fuel.  For two more she raises her Contrast to three.

Zaradia presents her gase to the Emperor, and as she returns to her seat she delivers one brief, terrible glance at Sicnifr.  A crow cries ominously outside.  Sicnifr is so shaken by this that he entirely botches the delivery of his argument, swinging the conflict in Zaradia's favor by nine dice.

This isn't free, though.  When Zaradia created her Flame, she also created the Smoke Weak As Tea from her Ember Internal Alchemist.  Her athletics will suffer for nine successive rolls.

I think I might become worried about the Trait Contrast mechanic of Embers... the math seems to indicate that fairly low Trait Contrast and high Character Contrast is very cost-effective.

[Blake Hutchins]

The Waterborn and Blackgod are some of my favorite fantasy novels, willows.  I agree wholeheartedly.

Best,

Blake

[Jonathan Walton]

The unusual mechanic might be the next thing going out the window.  Though I see a certain appropriateness in the slow reduction of frequency as bonuses rise, I'm not too excited about it, unlike the other mechanics, which I love.

Agreed.  I think there are probably better ways to handle "degree of success" anyway.  After all, if you roll a whole ton of dice and succeed, it suggests an overwhelming victory.  If you roll a whole ton of dice and still manage to fail, something really serious must have went wrong.  However if you're just rolling a few dice, you're going to barely succeed or fail, since the outcome is much more random.  You could just scale things that way, if you want, or come up with something else.

Contrast: Characters with permanent Contrast greater than one can spend Fuel to reduce their Contrast (one Fuel per level of Contrast) for the duration of a scene.

Nice idea.  They have to try really hard to be more "normal."  I like it very much.  It's like the X-Men playing "no powers" sports (which they seem to do every now and then).

Coals: A Coal is the term for an inactive Flame/Smoke pair.  For the cost of one Fuel, both Traits become active.  The Flame burns out at the end of the scene.  Whenever the Flame applies a modifier, add that same amount to its Smoke Trace.

Sweet name and sweet mechanic.  You're really unifying all these desparate elements together.  So now _everything_ has a lingering Smoke, but if you don't try anything too crazy, it's not likely to stick around long enough to do serious harm.  That is what you're doing, right?

I could see some cool character concepts like "Once-Powerful-Hero-Who-Shot-Down-the-Sun."  Someone once did an unbelievably powerful stunt and now is still trying to get rid of the curse-like Smoke Trace it left them with.  They would be both legend and leaper, since no one would want to risk being around them and getting caught up in the bad effects of the dangerous Smoke.

Embers: An Ember is a thematic category from which Flames and Smokes can be created.  These can have a Contrast value, like that of Lanterns.  Unlike Lanterns, though, the Contrast of the Trait itself and the Contrast of the character both are successively (not simultaneously; 3 Trait Contrast and 3 Character Contrast add up to 9, not 5, total dice) applied to the Trait for the purposes of figuring bonuses.

Okay, you're losing me.  Embers get their own Contrast value?  I'm having a hard time picturing this.  What is the Contrast applied to?  When Characters up their Contrast, it makes them more black-and-white, where their good traits become better and their bad traits become worse, but how does this apply to Embers?  The Flame of the Ember becomes stronger, but it lets off more Smoke?  If that's the case, how is it any different from upping the Character's Contrast (aside from the successive application, which is what gives you the funky math you mentioned at the bottom)?

I guess I was just imagining that an Ember would basically give a temporary Flame TO THE CHARACTER, which would be treated as one of the Character's active Flames for the purpose of the scene.  Contrast, then, could only be bought for that particular Character, not for specific Flame/Smoke Combinations.  After all, if you can apply Contrast to Embers, it seems reasonable that you could apply Contrast to a whole ton of different things, including:

-- Coals.
-- Flames/Smokes (permanently active ones possessed by the character).
-- Specific Scenes (applying to everyone in the scene, equally; creating a an event of legendary magnitude and importance).
-- Specific items (since, with "My Sword is Sharp as Winter," you're basically treating important items as Traits).
-- Lanterns, as you already mentioned.
-- anything else that could be construed as having Traits.

Now, to me as a player and GM, keeping up with all these Contrast levels and what they applied to would be a serious mess, especially if they only last for a single scene.  Do you really want to make things more complicated than they have to be?  Why can't you just buy an Ember Flame for X Fuel and then raise your personal Contrast if you want it to have larger effects?  That would fix your cost problem, at least.

Later.
Jonathan

P.S.  I really, really like the idea of "Scene Contrast" actually.  Could there be a way for one of the more powerful types of gods to raise the Contrast of a specific scene temporarily?  It basically be like upping the ante in Poker.  Once everyone realizes how high the stakes are going, they have to decide if they still want to play.  You could use it to bluff people or to create earth-shattering situations.

I can just imagine a conflict between such powerful gods.  "God A" raises the Scene Contrast to x5 (since Contrast is really a multiplier).  "God B" smiles and burns Fuel to up the scene Contrast to x8 (adding 3 more points).  "God C" is getting a little worried, but then decides to bluff, upping the scene Contrast to x14!  This is more than "God B" bargained for, so he quickly leaves.  Finally, Gods A & C prepare to _______ (duke it out, have a legendary debate, run a footrace, whatever!).

[Shreyas Sampat]

Yeah; I already had my doubts about Contrasty Embers, and clearly it was very difficult to word so others could interpret it easily.  I wanted to give them something besides their flexibility to differentiate them from Coals, but that might be unnecessary.

Strange that you use Shot-Down-the-Sun; I wrote a little story last night that mentions in passing a character with the name Arichesja Raven-Swallows-the-Sun (with a little pun in it, too; Arichesja translates to burning-bloom in the world's fictional language; it's one of the appellations of the sun.)  You can see the slow progress of my update working its way across the site.

As for Contrast application to Everything, that's certainly a thing.  At the moment, I've specifically mentioned (and not rejected) Character and Lantern Contrast; I like your Scene Contrast idea as well.  That's probably as far as Contrast can sanely go; anything that can be construed to have Traits can have its Contrast manipulated, but only holistically.  (Which, I guess, was the idea behind Contrast anyway.)

One thing that concerns me about Scene Contrast is that it seems to me that it would be hard to price.  Characters and Lanterns are singular entities, so their Contrasts can be manipulated with relative ease, but an entire Scene having its Contrast raised can have very far-reaching effects.

It would seem reasonable, I think, to price Scene at 3 per point of Contrast; the likelihood of more than three characters having an effect on a roll seems low to me, and a Scene should not have a great number of rolls.  Besides which, I like the number three.

The Smoke Trace mechanic is doing exactly what you said, unifying all the mechanics.  Originally I had it simply subtract an equal number of dice over time, but that requires not only bookkeeping but would result in strange optimization.  With this other setup, characters are likely to pay a lot more for drawing on the supernatural.  It draws Torchbearer away from Exalted again; Exalted characters certainly could shoot down the sun, and then get up the next morning and make toast.  A Torchbearer would certainly spend years running around burning off his bad karma for that kind of thing.

[Walt Freitag]

This means that theoretically the game could be played with pure Symmetry, which has the benefit of not having to subtract rings but also the disadvantage of having multiple die types. As it stands, one could run T with unmodified d6, reading 1 as ring and the numbers where all the corners are occupied - 4,5,6 - as point.

As Mike Holmes pointed out on the Symmetry thread, there are some variants that at least omit the "level" dice. Here are two possibilities (since you don't seem to mind rolling lots of dice when appropriate):

1. Use a d12 as the Core die, and d6s as modifier dice. Dice can be ordinary. Any result of 6 or higher on any die is a success (or failure, if negative mods).

2. Use all d6s. Start with four of the dice instead of the core die, and add additional dice as modifiers. Any result of some particular side is a success (or failure). There's a little glitch at the center of the scale that makes that first point of modifier, either positive or negative, a little more signficant than it should be. Also the chance of success at zero mod is a little over 50% (unless you resolve that specific case in a different way, with any 50-50 roll). Here's how it works out:

-4  .233
-3  .279
-2  .335
-1  .402
0   .518  (or .500 if you flip a coin instead)
1   .598
2   .665
3   .721
4   .767

8   .888
12 .946
16 .974

- Walt

[Jonathan Walton]

Strange that you use Shot-Down-the-Sun; I wrote a little story last night that mentions in passing a character with the name Arichesja Raven-Swallows-the-Sun.

Not all that strange really.  Popular Chinese legend.

Hou Yi was a primordial culture-hero who shot down 8 of the 9 suns in the sky (which made the earth too hot, so the crops couldn't grow), winning the support of the people, who made him king.  Strangely enough, the suns supposedly had the forms of 3-footed ravens, covered in fire...

I completely agree with all your mechanics musings.  Good stuff.  

The one thing still bothering me is how Scene Contrast would affect Characters gaining Smoke Traces.  Would Characters entering into a high-Contrast scene know that they would receieve a whole ton of lingering Smokes, simply because of the high-Contrast magnifying the Traits they used?  Or would the Contrast of the scene have no effect on Smokes gained, just the magnitude of the Traits' effects?  If the latter, what would be the great risk of high-Contrast scenes?  I feel like they should be potentially earth-shattering in both good and bad ways...

Later.
Jonathan

[Shreyas Sampat]

Well, it's Contrast, so it gives you extra dice, so you take extra Traces.  No reason to much the system up with confusing exceptions.

A question for the storytellers: What makes a game/world/story mythic?  I don't want Torchbearer to become high-powered wuxia fantasy; what drives the characters to the heights of mythic beauty that creates stories like Waterborn?  Should the game have some mechanic that reinforces mythicity over fantasy, like the Riddle of Steel has its powerful Spiritual Attributes mechanic that ties characters and the story together?

I can see Traits being used to model TROS SAs; this was part of the idea behind leaving them as poorly defined as I did (Though I plan to define them more sharply in the finished product).  

Another question that has been bugging me:
A lot of RPGs present some system for mechanical character development.  With the system I have here, does this seem workable or even appropriate?

Edit: Updated the site (front and people pages) with cleaner Torchbearer material.