new game and guy - mechanic question

[taalyn]

But as long as you allow for the points to be distributed as the player sees fit, some players will distriute widely, and others will stack.

This is true - some players will stack, and others won't. But stacking by player prerogative is better than mandatory stacking, IMO. There is another characteristic, Corona, which is basically a measure of how amazing a character is. Simply take each trait, subtract 3 (for the average Joe), and add to the result for every other trait.  No negative numbers - a strength of 2 -3 = 0 for purposes of Corona. Corona  represents, in-game, how "brightly" the "fire" burns in a character, how heroic, etc. Well spread stats make for a low Corona, which has advantages, while stacked characters make for high Corona, with disadvantages. For example, the big beastie will always go for the highest Corona character, all other things being equal.

The urge to stack, BTW, is quite strong. Most players understand two things about characters. One is that stacking up a stat is a good way to stand out from the crowd. There's always one player who'll want to have the "really strong" guy. And another who wants the extremely dexterous guy.

Also a good point. And part of why my rule on chargen is "yes!". I want the players to have fun, and I certainly know there are times when I wanted to be the munchkin.  Within reason, I'll let players have any kind of character they want. The only issue is whether their concept will work with the other players.

The other thing that players understand is that having weaknesses is fun. A character that doesn't have any holes is less fun to play because they won't tend to be included in the action in negative ways.
Basically extreme characters are more fun to the average player.

True. But I'd still rather let a player stack their characters how they want rather than forcing them to pick a certain scheme of stacking. These points have made it clear in my mind that I should ignore my worries about unbalanced or low-success as regards some actions. Players know what they're getting into, so let them live with their choices! Thanks for helping me clarify this in my own mind.

I think what you have is pretty unique. I had to go pretty far to think of Magic Realm. I look forward to seeing the final implementation. I keep getting this feeling that the game is like a really colorful version of Scott Knipe's Wyrd. You might want to check that out (there shouold be a link in the resources).

I will give it a gander. Thanks for your help, Mike. It's been immensely helpful, particularly in terms of my own inclination to fiddle indefinitely.

Aidan

[taalyn]

Hmmm...

What about scrapping the automatic contributions from adjacent colors (which doesn't really make much sense to me, except statistically) and allowing players to gain extra successes by narrating how they incorporate the other colors they have chosen into their action.

might become:

For example, Sally wants her character Kayley to throw a plate at the cop entering the diner. This is a precision skill (as are most firearms), and her Throw Things skill is rated A4 (Amber, 4 motes), against a difficulty of 3. She draws 4 motes (aka tokens) and gets 2 red motes, an amber, and a blue. This is normally two successes, enough to hit the cop, but she wants to hit him well. She uses her two red motes to leap onto the table of the booth, positioning herself perfectly to hit him in the face. This gives her a total of four successes.

or something like that.

Oh, and I think that making the Caern equal to stats is a natural choice.

This is a GREAT idea. two comment:

1) re: adjacent colors - the idea is that Amber is partly red, and thus a partial success; it's just on the edges of being red. Making them whole successes and the target 2 was simply to avoid halves. If, in-game, an action happens because it draws on the universal enegy around us, and which manifests in threads of different colors, and red threads 'power' athletic physical actions, then an amber thread (amber=red light + green light) can power the action to an extent because it can be broken down into a red thread and a green thread. Does that make more sense?

2) It seems like there would need to be a limit on the number of other colors used in your example. That is, how does one describe an artistic (amber) and crafty (cyan) way of hitting the cop with the plate? Obviously, some types of actions are always going to use the same colors. And Luck (generic mystical energy which powers spells) can also be used to adjust draws: I need one more success to succeed in throwing the plate, but didn't draw enough. I can spend 3 Luck, and magically, the plate bounces off someone else's head to hit the cop right in the smacker.

I guess what i'm saying is that I like the idea, but I'm not sure it doesn't introduce added and unneeded complexity. It's close enough to the magic system that if I got rid of adjacent successes, the extra motes could just be cantrips. The other motes in the example above could be woven with Luck to create a small spell of distance, or maneuverability, or some such, giving a bonus to hit.

There's also the issue of characterizing types of action. Offense and defense are easy to come up with, but what about the other 5 colors? It took me ages to come up with the skill groups. If you and everyone else could help come up with these other action types, I'd be more inclined to actually incorporate it.

So, our list of 7 action types starts with  offense and defense. These may be too general, but can anyone else think of anything else to list? I'm stumped.

Aidan

[taalyn]

I happen to think that Stuart's suggestion here is great.  I had thoughts on a similar thing with a game that I'm working on off-boards, Golden Crow...

Ooh, cool! What kinds of stances/attitudes have you come up with, if you're willing to share? I also like the idea, but I have some reservations about how it can be utilized.

Also, I can't believe that no one's mentioned Jared's game Color Wheel yet.  It's basically the naked bones of your mechanic, with an interesting implementation for the Black and White colours.

hey, I remember that! It was one of the systems I was looking at when I was trying to hammer out how my color system would work. Originally, red was +5, orange was +3, (etc.) and violet was -5. I decided I didn't like that, and Jared's Color Wheel helped me think about the colors in different ways.


Thanks for the encouragement, 4WW!

 Aidan

[Shreyas Sampat]

Well, Golden Crow takes a lot of its character structure from Refreshing Rain, which has been discussed here in some length, but its randomization mechanic is totally different, and it has a different feel; it's a game about cultural conflict.  If you're interested, I'll PM you with more stuff.

Maybe a combination of the off-colors-equal-bonuses and use-any-color-you-can-describe can work: you can use whatever adjacent (or non-complementary, or whatever) colors you want, as long as you incorporate them into your description.

[szilard]

This is a GREAT idea. two comment:

1) re: adjacent colors - the idea is that Amber is partly red, and thus a partial success; it's just on the edges of being red. Making them whole successes and the target 2 was simply to avoid halves. If, in-game, an action happens because it draws on the universal enegy around us, and which manifests in threads of different colors, and red threads 'power' athletic physical actions, then an amber thread (amber=red light + green light) can power the action to an extent because it can be broken down into a red thread and a green thread. Does that make more sense?

It makes sense to a point. The problem, though, is that what amber and magenta stand for may be wholly irrelevant to the task at hand.

Do the characters (in-game) know about this color-stuff?

2) It seems like there would need to be a limit on the number of other colors used in your example. That is, how does one describe an artistic (amber) and crafty (cyan) way of hitting the cop with the plate? Obviously, some types of actions are always going to use the same colors. And Luck (generic mystical energy which powers spells) can also be used to adjust draws: I need one more success to succeed in throwing the plate, but didn't draw enough. I can spend 3 Luck, and magically, the plate bounces off someone else's head to hit the cop right in the smacker.

Well, it is clearly going to depend upon circumstances. Someone might, for instance, whistle a little tune so that the cop will turn his head just in time to get hit in the face with the plate. Most of it will depend upon player ingenuity. I see that as a feature, not a bug.

You could also limit the number of extra successes by the number of natural successes drawn. Say I am performing an athletic action, and I draw one red mote for two successes. I drew three other motes, but I can - at most - use two of them for extra succeses. Alternatively, you could limit this by mote number rather than success number (in which case I would be limited to one extra success in the above example).

Stuart

[taalyn]

Heya Stuart,

  Mostly, no, in-game characters do not know the adjacency issue and mote breakdown, mostly because it's not an issue. I have explpained it in one or two instance where it was relevant, but usually it's not. The players never cared why amber worked other than it was next to red.

 I am going to keep the mechanic as is, I think. Your ideas are great, and definitely fall in line with the magic system, but they just don't feel right. I can't offer a better explanation than that - except maybe that my simminess is upset by the freeformity of it all.

 Aidan

[Lance D. Allen]

On Caern: I like the idea of matching your caern picks up with your stats. Defines your character's strengths and weaknesses neatly.

On color associations: I'm not sure I get them. I'm not even sure where the colors themselves come from. When I think of spectrum, I think of the standard 6 colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Add clear or grey or something for 7. The way I'd envision it..

Red: Survival
Orange: Action/Proactivity
Yellow: Focusing
Green: Empathy/Assisting
Blue: Social/Speaking
Purple: Mental/Thought
Clear: Spiritual/Magical

If you have a basis for your interpretations, then feel absolutely free to ignore mine completely. Or if you simply prefer yours, for that matter. Mine, however, comes from the 7 main chakras which run up the center of the body, and their basic energy types. You can also determine types of action off of them.

If I shoot you, it's an orange/proaction type. If I run my ass off to keep you from beating my ass, it's definitely red/survival. If I am concentrating on studying, it's purple/mental, and if I am working on bandaging wounds or casting a healing spell, It'd be green/assisting. Meditation would be yellow/focusing, and public speaking would be blue/Speaking.

Also, I like the idea of being able to add more successes from other motes based on actions. It's like the stacking ability in Sorceror, where you justify additional dice by additional effort. It doesn't make sense, to me to automatically add simply based on color, that amber should add to red actions simply because they're adjacent. What does amber/artistic have to do with red/physical? If the player can make it relate though, I'd let it add, but not otherwise. It would encourage the players to be creative and proactive in their descriptions, and reward them for being so. The idea is referred to as Fortune in the Middle (FitM) And goes something like this: Declare intended action, initiate fortune mechanic (roll the dice, draw the card, pull the beads from the bag..) determine what the fortune result means, then apply results.

How I'd apply my colors to the aforementioned example, and use the idea of adding based on other colors and their applications..

Sally wants her character Kayley to throw a plate at the cop entering the diner. This is a proaction skill (as are most firearms), and her Throw Things skill is rated O4 (Orange, 4 motes), against a difficulty of 3. She draws 4 motes (aka tokens) and gets 2 red motes, an orange, and a yellow. This is normally two successes, enough to hit the cop, but she wants to hit him well. She took a moment to aim, focusing on exactly where she wants to hit him, adding one more success to her roll. If he'd been about to shoot her, Sally could argue that she was throwing the plate at his weapon, attempting to knock it from his hand, thus defending herself, and adding another two motes to the action.

But it is of course your game. I'm interested in what you do with it regardless, but I figured I'd offer my suggestions, all the same.

[taalyn]

On Caern: I like the idea of matching your caern picks up with your stats. Defines your character's strengths and weaknesses neatly.

Yeah, my players have all thought it was the coolest thing. Just spill out your caern and you can see your character's make-up in a glance.  I realized today too that my worries about "unbalanced" characters with 43 red and 2 blue (exaggeration, obviously) don't matter. Not only is it fun to play an unbalanced character like this some times, it neatly characterizes people who have valued one ability to the detriment of others, and I don't have to worry about all sorts of ways to penalize such imbalance - it's built in! "There are consequences to your stats, grasshopper!"

On color associations: I'm not sure I get them. I'm not even sure where the colors themselves come from. When I think of spectrum, I think of the standard 6 colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Add clear or grey or something for 7.

Well, the colors, to begin with, are the additive spectrum - the one in light (in your TV or computer screen). The colors you give are for the subtractive spectrum (the one in paint), which can be used (I do have a nice big color wheel, with both spectrums lined up so you can see the correspondence at a glance, in case you just can't/don't wanna get your mind around the additive. Here's how they correspond:

Red - Red
Amber - Orange
Green - Yellow
Cyan - Green
Blue - Blue
Magenta - Violet)

As for meaning/symbolism, that's more complicated. Basically, it starts with Red as Body, Green as Mind, and Blue as Soul (these are the associations of my religious group). Red thus goes with strength, Green with intelligence, and blue with will. red+green=amber, so amber is about mind and body together = charisma as the opposite end of the blue/soul axis.  Think mind+body in terms of the soul. Cyan is thus blue/soul+green/mind in terms of red/body - dexterity. Magenta is red/body+blue/soul in terms of green/mind - perception. Clear, at the center of the wheel (and with adjacent colors red and magenta, as in infrared and ultraviolet), is the trait empathy.

These traits then get associated with skills like this:

red/red - strength - athletic (running, climbing)
amber/orange - charisma - artistic (painting, singing)
green/yellow - intelligence - knowledge (history, languages)
cyan/green - dexterity - craft (pottery, electrician)
blue/blue - will - spiritual (counseling, meditation)
magenta/violet - perception - precision (firing a gun, accounting)
clear - empathy - magical skills

Note that empathy includes empathy with the world, sensing Luck and using it.

The way I'd envision it..

Red: Survival
Orange: Action/Proactivity
Yellow: Focusing
Green: Empathy/Assisting
Blue: Social/Speaking
Purple: Mental/Thought
Clear: Spiritual/Magical

Perhaps I might use some of yours anyway. Craft and precision are really hard to differentiate, and social skills might be a useful replacement. Here's how you suggestions match up with mine:

R: athletic/survival
A/O: artistic/action-proactivity
G/Y: knowledge/focusing
C/G: craft or precision/empathy
B: spirit or counseling/social
M/V: precision or social/mental-thought
X (Clear): magic/spirit and magic

I do like your ideas, but this might be better as a whole new thread - how to arrange my stats and skill groups on the wheel. I can see advantages to both systems - mine functions as a very complex structure, which is nice, but yours presents how adjacent colors relate better.

If I shoot you, it's an orange/proaction type. If I run my ass off to keep you from beating my ass, it's definitely red/survival. If I am concentrating on studying, it's purple/mental, and if I am working on bandaging wounds or casting a healing spell, It'd be green/assisting. Meditation would be yellow/focusing, and public speaking would be blue/Speaking.

There will always be room for argument, I think, but the difference between survival and action (R & O) is about as simple to explain as the difference between my craft and precision (C & M). These both need some adjusting, I think.  Now that you've seen how it all fits together, I have 2 questions for you: 1) should I explain all the theoretical background for the color associations? I think it might be good, particularly if there's something weird that comes up and doesn't fit easily into any particular color. Having the basis might make it easier to figure our what Color it should be. 2) With the switches I'm contemplating (cyan = precision, magenta = social), does it make more sense to you now? Obviously, I can assign colors however I want, but I do want there to be a logic to it, and people willl need to be able to place any skill in it's appropriate skill group, so I need to make sure that the skill groups are broad enough to cover any possible skill.

Also, I like the idea of being able to add more successes from other motes based on actions. It's like the stacking ability in Sorceror, where you justify additional dice by additional effort. It doesn't make sense, to me to automatically add simply based on color, that amber should add to red actions simply because they're adjacent. What does amber/artistic have to do with red/physical? If the player can make it relate though, I'd let it add, but not otherwise. It would encourage the players to be creative and proactive in their descriptions, and reward them for being so. The idea is referred to as Fortune in the Middle (FitM) And goes something like this: Declare intended action, initiate fortune mechanic (roll the dice, draw the card, pull the beads from the bag..) determine what the fortune result means, then apply results.

Well, I'm getting a lot of people who really like this stacking idea. Maybe I should use it after all - especially since I really like the FitM idea. If so, I have to calculate all the probabilities again - pooh. Anyone know a relevant formula? I wrote a program last time to run through every possible draw and note the successes and such, and if I can do it faster, I'd rather. I think my previous reticence was mostly a result of wanting to avoid the extra work in explanation this will involve! Oh well...

But it is of course your game. I'm interested in what you do with it regardless, but I figured I'd offer my suggestions, all the same.

I appreciate them greatly! You've really given me food for thought, and added more to the pile of food about color stacking.

Aidan

[Lance D. Allen]

1. Yes, definitely explain the background behind the color associations. Greater understanding will allow more consistency in rulings.
2. I am to assume that if you make the mentioned changes, firearms and throwing things will become Cyan/Precision based actions? I never could get my head around how firearms was an amber/artistic action. If so, I'd definitely say that it makes more sense.

As for any overlaps in my own color ideas, (such as the red/orange overlap of actions) blame those who conceptualized the chakras. The difference between the two is basically that red is about "I need" and orange is about "I want". Red could also be used as the stat for damage resistance, or anything to do with survival, whereas orange could be almost any proactive physical action. (Both are related to earth/physical)

Your color associations with more explanation do make quite a bit of sense, however. As I answered above, I think the explanation is crucial.

As for probability of success chances, no cut-and-dried chart will be able to accurately predict the chances of success using a system where the player will be able to add to their chance of success by creative narration. But then, a lot of people dig this idea. If you have access to Ron Edwards' Sorcerer, you can get some of the theory behind this idea, but I'll boil it down to the way I see it, personally: No player really likes the survival of their character to be totally up to chance. This allows them to increase their chances by making the story a little bit more interesting. The primary difference between the mechanic used in Sorcerer and the one described here is that in Sorcerer, the player adds dice prior to rolling by additional descriptions, etc. With your system, it makes more sense to do the Fortune prior to the added description, and base the added description on the results. It can vary exactly what happens, and force the players to think in creative ways. Overall, the idea is to improve the scenes and story by encouraging player proactivity. Those who choose not to add a little description beyond "I shoot him" are not penalized, but those who will "leap atop the table to get a clear shot at him, taking a brief moment to aim carefully for his head before pulling the trigger" are more likely to succeed.

It's entirely metagame, but a lot of times, the metagame is what truly makes a game interesting and drives it forward.

[Mike Holmes]

One thing that may be of interest is the rate at which the special motes show up. Depending on the number of motes drawn, the chances of getting at least one special stone increase dramatically. Here are the odds of a character with 45 total motes including the three special ones drawing at least one of the three special motes:

Code Select Expand

Dice  Special
1       6.67%
2      13.03%
3      19.10%
4      24.88%
5      30.37%
6      35.60%
7      40.55%
8      45.24%

By four motes pulled nearly one in four draws will include a special mote. By six, more than one in three will be special. What's the range on your skills? Does this sound like the tight number of appearances of these motes?

Mike

[taalyn]

1. Yes, definitely explain the background behind the color associations. Greater understanding will allow more consistency in rulings.
2. I am to assume that if you make the mentioned changes, firearms and throwing things will become Cyan/Precision based actions? I never could get my head around how firearms was an amber/artistic action. If so, I'd definitely say that it makes more sense.

How did you get firearms as an artistic action? It never was...it was magenta/precision before the changes you've helped me come to. Maybe it was a bad example on my part. Anyhoo...

I'll make sure to explain the color background.

As for probability of success chances, no cut-and-dried chart will be able to accurately predict the chances of success using a system where the player will be able to add to their chance of success by creative narration. But then, a lot of people dig this idea.

True, I can't get a good system of probability. Before I used a completely balanced caern as the sample, just to set a baseline of what was possible. I can still do that, even with stacking - just find a baseline difficulty  to run off of.

Those who choose not to add a little description beyond "I shoot him" are not penalized, but those who will "leap atop the table to get a clear shot at him, taking a brief moment to aim carefully for his head before pulling the trigger" are more likely to succeed.

I agree - no penalties to the shyer players. The metagame possibilities give additional benefits to the game, and are worth adding. The difficulty for me is just that - difficulties! How to assign them when this stacking is added, or replaces adjacency? I started a new thread for that topic.

Aidan

[taalyn]

Heya Mike,

  Something seems off about those numbers.  Wouldn't  it be closer to 1/45 (* 1/44) = 2% (.05%)? I know there's more to the formula or probability than that, but in my experience (2 years of playing this mechanic every now and then) I drew one of the Fate motes exactly twice. Say in 500 draws. I know that more motes = more chances to draw the Fates, but I don't know why my experience is so different from the math.

  Assuming you're right, I wonder if there's something I can do to make the results more realistic - I don't like that the better you are at a skill, the better your chances to fail. Perhaps over a certain hand/# for a skill, the player has a chance to ignore the black mote, or in some other way mitigate it's effects?

  Aidan

[Brian Leybourne]

Assuming you're right, I wonder if there's something I can do to make the results more realistic - I don't like that the better you are at a skill, the better your chances to fail. Perhaps over a certain hand/# for a skill, the player has a chance to ignore the black mote, or in some other way mitigate it's effects?

No, his math looks about right to me (I have not worked it out exactly, but intuitively it seems right). And thus you have run into exactly the same flaw that Deadlands has that screws one whole aspect of the game.

We ran an extended Deadlands game for nearly two years. It's a lot of fun, albiet extremely over-the-top deadly if you're not careful. However, the (huckster) magic system is broken, pure and simple.

The way it works is you draw a number of cards at random from a standard deck of cards. The number you draw is determined by a skill roll, but is never less than five. Having drawn X cards, you make the best 5-card poker hand you can with them, and whichever poker hand you have determines how powerful the spell is. For a standard "zap" spell, an "Ace High" might stun the opponent for a second, while a "Royal Flush" would leave nothing but a smoking pile of ash. You get the idea.

If you draw a joker, it counts as a wildcard, but you also have to roll on the backlash table, which 90% of the time screws you up. You might target the spell on yourself, or lose the ability to use magic for X days, or your head explodes, or you get possessed, that kind of thing. Nasty. At the very least the spell fails.

I'm sure you've already seen what I'm getting at and what we very quickly found was wrong with the system. The more skilled you are, the more cards you draw, and thus the more chance you have of drawing a joker. Now, that was mitigated somewhat by an errata that only black jokers caused backlash (in a standard deck, one joker is black and the other red) but all it did was halve the probability, the fact remains that the more skilled you are, the more likely you are to get the black joker and then you're fucked.

You have the same problem here. And what's worse is there's no easy way to mitigate it without dropping the idea of a black mote.

Brian.

[Lance D. Allen]

I remember a discussion of a similar concept in the TRoS boards.. When you roll a single die, the possibility of failure is high, but the possibility of a fumble or critical failure is impossible, because it requires 2 or more dice, and zero successes. It was jokingly asserted that the more skilled you were, the more capable you were of spectacular goof-ups. They were unlikely, but it was more likely to fumble the more dice you rolled.

I think that basically you've got two choices; either scrap the white, black and irridescent, or accept that that the chances of drawing the black are greater the higher your skill. If you choose to accept it, you can alter what the dice do, slightly, or just accept it the way it is.

I, personally, have no issues with it. Randomizer's like that make the game more interesting, and you can allow an option to nullify the black with boons or luck.

[Spooky Fanboy]

Randomizer's like that make the game more interesting, and you can allow an option to nullify the black with boons or luck.

Or, just allow every success beyond the basic amount required to cancel one or two black motes. That way, you can succeed spectacularly with complications, or succeed prosaically without any nasty surprises.