new game and guy - mechanic question

[taalyn]

These are all good ideas. I've got a couple options, as I see it:

1) lose black and white altogether, as irridescent doesn't do anything but add weird, Lucky coincidence and Fate into the game, and the heroes do tend to attract that.

2) keep black and white, but modify their meaning from failure and sucess to complications and blessings. See above re: heroes.

3) allow Boons and luck to cancel them out, as Spooky suggests.

I'm thinking option 2 and 3 together get me what I want. With option 2, they're vague, and allow more detail to be introduced to the game, just like stacking.

frex:
our guy Jonas is up against an Unseelie troll for the first time (unseelie trolls are unusual - what bridge-liver whants to get rid of bridge-builders? ;). Jonas needs to knock the troll out before it has a chance to clout him one - Troll being famous for their strength. Jonas is going to smack him with a baseball bat conveniently nearby, using his Softball R8 Talent, against a GM set difficulty of 7. Derek draws: RAAACCBK.

1) old style: 2 (R) + 3 (A) = 5, + black = not good. He fails to hit, but the troll sees what he was going for and is now super-pissed, getting a +1 to his atacks (from the complicating black).

2) stacked: 2 successes. Derek argues that  the 2 cyans (precision) count because he aimed very carefully. And the 3 ambers (artistic) count because he did it while mimicing saturday morning ninja shows. His histrionics, dubbed dialogue, and outlandish "hai-ya!" distracted the troll from what was really happening. The GM allows it, granting Derek 7 successes - he hit! But there's still that complicating black - Jonas did indeed knock the troll out, but it collapsed onto him, and now our hero Jonas is trapped under 500 pounds of soon-to-be-awake-and-very-angry troll. Oh no! Tune in next week when ...

I didn't apply the limit rules I've mentioned for stacking the colors, just for play purposes.  Whaddaya think?

Oh, and I think I'm gonna change the name of the irridescent mote. How about the Lucky mote? Or is that superloading one term? Other suggestions?

Aidan

[Lance D. Allen]

Wild mote? (You make my heart gloat)

Err... Chance mote? Odd mote out?

If I had time, I'd go look for gaelic words that mean wild, lucky, or chance, but I gotta head off to work soon.

[taalyn]

As a Celticist by education (at least, I'm finishing my MA in Celtic langs right now), I feel it's my duty to inform you that there are two languages often confused by the public at large.

There is Irish, spoken in Ireland, known in Irish as Gaeilge, but called Irish by everyone in Ireland if they're speaking English.

Then there is Gaelic, or Scots Gaelic (Irish with 400 years to drift), spoken in Scotland, and called, in Gaelic, Gàidhlig.

The former is pronounced like /GELL-ig/ and the later /G&-lig/, where & is the sound in cat.

Okay, that PSA done, here are words in Irish for wildy sorts of things:

wild: fiáin /FYOIN/
luck: ádh /AW/
bounty, prosperity: rath /RAH/
fortune, ease, satisfaction: só /SO/

A-cha! It shall be called:

Dán /DON/, which is fate and destiny, particularly as described by poets!

Thanks Wolfen - you helped me get past my duh moment (I'm having lots of them lately).

Aidan

[Twinsoul]

First of all, great system. I love the idea of using stones instead of dices.

But there is just one thing bothering me, what happens when you have a skill of 1. You can draw only one stone. Thats not very good odds. Or what if you don't even have the skill needed? In most games, there is a way of using your stats to calculate your success when you don't have the required skill. But the way your system works is that you draw a number of motes equal to your skill and not equal to your stat. How would you roll for a skill you don't have?

I love the idea of using stones for magic and I just might steal this system for my magic system. The way I see my magic work is that a spell slowly degenerates, so by using the stones, each round the player removes a stone from his spell, hence changing the spell slightly, instead of being able to cast the spell at 100 yards, it now only has a range of 80 yards. Ans so forth until the spell breaks down.

[taalyn]

Twinsoul (interesting ID - why? You know the other implications, yes?),

  Thanks for the compliment! I think it's great too, and I'm hoping I can get the game developed enough to get some of those "favorite indie rpg" votes next year.
 If you've only got a skill of 1 - you do suck at that skill, so it's appropriate that you have very poor odds. Other issues can come into play, though - stacking (explaining a wrong color to turn it into a success), Luck, Boons, etc. Some things have changed about those, which I'll explain in a sec...

 As far as defaults go, if it's a skill possessed by anyone in the culture, then a PCs Nature steps in. Jonas doesn't have a "shoot 'em up" skill, but his Nature (American innercity dude 4) does, so he'd draw with that, targeting the appropriate color (magenta/precison in this case). If the skill is not something you'd have at all (Nuclear Physics for Jonas, for example), then the GM may allow a draw against the Nature with a significant penalty.

  Cool idea for degeneration of magic, but it wouldn't work in my system. If it works in yours, excellent! What happens when it degenerates to the point that essential factors in the spell (what it actually does, as opposed to "side effects" like damage or distance)? Does the effect change? Or does it just unravel at that point?

  So, the new bits: a draw is based on skill - skill. If Jonas has strength 9, and the door's Door-osity is 4, then the player will draw 5 motes. If he gets any successes at all, he breaks the door, or whatever. Extra successes just indicate degree of success.

  An alternate possibility: Jonas has str 4, and the doorness is 9. In this case, Jonas will automatically fail, unless he spends boons or Luck. Luck is spent 1 mote for 1 mote. If he spends 6 Luck, he can draw 1 mote (4-9 = -5, add 6 motes = 1 mote). Or he can spend 5 Luck (as above) and a Boon.
 
  A Boon is an autosuccess - it turns any mote into one success. Suppose Jonas is drawing 4 motes. He could spend a Boon, and would then only draw 3 motes.  The other was already ensured.  

  He could also spend 6 Boons, and that would guarantee a single success, but that's kind of expensive.  Boons are gained by sacrificing degree of success - If I got 4 successes, I could succeed excellently, or lose 3 to gain a Boon. I'd still succeed, though only just, but I'd have a Boon/autosuccess to use later. So 6 Boons corrsponds to 18 motes of degree of success - that's a lot!

  Make sense?

 Aidan

[Twinsoul]

If you've only got a skill of 1 - you do suck at that skill, so it's appropriate that you have very poor odds. Other issues can come into play, though - stacking (explaining a wrong color to turn it into a success), Luck, Boons, etc. Some things have changed about those, which I'll explain in a sec...

Ya I was thinking about it after I wrote it and it's true, if you have a level of 1 in a skill, you suck. : )

 As far as defaults go, if it's a skill possessed by anyone in the culture, then a PCs Nature steps in. Jonas doesn't have a "shoot 'em up" skill, but his Nature (American innercity dude 4) does, so he'd draw with that, targeting the appropriate color (magenta/precison in this case). If the skill is not something you'd have at all (Nuclear Physics for Jonas, for example), then the GM may allow a draw against the Nature with a significant penalty.

I forgot about the Nature, but it would seem like you should have some penalties for drawing a hand for a skill you don't have even if it's in your Nature or else you would just need your Nature and no other skills.

  Cool idea for degeneration of magic, but it wouldn't work in my system. If it works in yours, excellent! What happens when it degenerates to the point that essential factors in the spell (what it actually does, as opposed to "side effects" like damage or distance)? Does the effect change? Or does it just unravel at that point?

Ya it just unravels, but nothing stops the mage to add more threads to the spells to keep it going.

An alternate possibility: Jonas has str 4, and the doorness is 9. In this case, Jonas will automatically fail, unless he spends boons or Luck. Luck is spent 1 mote for 1 mote. If he spends 6 Luck, he can draw 1 mote (4-9 = -5, add 6 motes = 1 mote). Or he can spend 5 Luck (as above) and a Boon.

I actually just asked you in your other thread about this kind of possibility. : ) hehehe I should've checked here first.

Make sense?

Yes thanks!

[taalyn]

Hey again!

  The point of the Nature is that you do  have those skills. You don't need to have a skill in driving a car or operating a computer, unless your skills in these things are outside the norm.
   For example, Amanda and Betty both have Texan teenage girls 4 as Natures. Both know how to apply makeup, but Amanda's particularly good at it; she has a separate skill in it (Makeup M6). Both know how to dance, but Betty's really good at it (Dance A7). Both can dance, both can put on makeup, and they only have separate skills in things that are significant to their lives. Otherwise, you have to have skills for using the toilet, and telling time, and speaking English, and.... why? Nature covers a broad swathe of skills, and Profession another broad swathe, but they're not the only skills a person has.

  Aidan

[Twinsoul]

Hey again!

    For example, Amanda and Betty both have Texan teenage girls 4 as Natures. Both know how to apply makeup, but Amanda's particularly good at it; she has a separate skill in it (Makeup M6).

Ok, let me see. The player playing Amanda decides that he wants Amanda to be good at applying makeup. I take it that the skill doesn't start at 1, it should start at your Natures skill level, right? So he adds character points to create the skill Makeup at M5 (because her Nature is at 4).

I just don't like the idea of having many skills under one. Let's say your character has a Profession of Computer Programmer 4. So with that, he can create computer programs, he can make designs, he knows how to work computers and he knows how to make strong coffee all at a skill level of 4. With these skills an knowledge he would know how to hack a program, but he wouldn't be as good as making coffee.  The way it's set up now, is that you can have a skill which sets all the skills it emcompasses to a certain level.

I don't mind having Professions and Natures but they should be well described, like hacking could be rolled but with penalties since it's not really part of the Computer Programmer Profession.

[taalyn]

Well, there are modifiers if a skill is only slightly associated with a Nature or Profession.  I'm just not going to define what they should be in every case.  I'm also not going to describe very nature or profession - do you know how many skills are grouped together in job counseling summaries? Who would ever want to roll against their "write effective business plans" skill? It's obvious you don't like a game as gritty as mine is shaping up to be - and that's perfectly fine. There are plenty of non-gritty games to play out there! ;)

Aidan

[Lance D. Allen]

Okay a few points and questions...

1. Define gritty in your own words, so we know exactly what you mean when you use it. When I think gritty, I think Riddle of Steel, where a single sword in the gullet kills you as dead as it would in real life.

2. I really like the concepts of Nature and Profession. It's incredibly stupid to have to have skills for dozens of minor tasks that you should be able to do. It's very similar to TRoS's skill packets, and is an idea that is becoming more attractive, and if I can figure out how to make it workable in Mage Blade, I just might do something similar.

3. I'm slightly dubious about your skill - skill system. I'd have to actually see it in various uses to get an idea for how it actually works, but it seems to me to be a little too cut and dried. An objects rating wouldn't make me any less proficient or strong. I would simply have to try much harder to accomplish the task. It makes more sense to me to simply have the object's rating be the TN for your roll. In your examples..

Jonas is pretty damned buff with his 9 (I was under the impression that 8 was your upper limit? Was I mistaken?) strength, and there's that door sitting there with it's door-ness rating of 4. Simple enough for a buff mofo as he. He draws his 9 motes, only needing 2 of the appropriate color to get through, or some combination of stacking.

Jonas the small with his strength of 4 is staring at a steel security door with a rather smug air, and a door-ness rating of 9. It's looking about impossible. Even if he drew all four of the appropriate color, he'd still be short a single success, so he'd have to rely on luck or a boon to get that last one. The chances of him drawing 4 out of 4 motes of the right color are pretty damned slim, though.

Done this way, you keep unity with the rest of the system.

4. Opposed draws: I've seen no mention of these. There has to be a resolution for them, though. Am I to assume that it's a fairly simple opposed draw, with each attempting to beat the other's draw. In some tasks, I would think that they have to beat a certain TN as well. For example..

Direct opposed draw: Jonas the strong and Jonas the strong are arm wrestling. Jonas the strong draws his strength of 9, and Jonas the small draws his strength of 4. Whoever has the most successes wins.

Opposed draw with a TN: Jonas the strong and Jonas the small are now competition shooting. Jonas the strong has rifles R5 and Jonas the small has it at R6. The TN for the target is 4. They both have to beat 4 successes to even manage to hit the target. If they don't make 4, they miss. If they make 4 or better, then they succeed, and whoever has the larger margin hits a bit closer to center, thus winning.

Do I have the right of it, or do you have something else worked out?

[taalyn]

Okay a few points and questions...

1. Define gritty in your own words, so we know exactly what you mean when you use it. When I think gritty, I think Riddle of Steel, where a single sword in the gullet kills you as dead as it would in real life.

 Ah, good point. On one point, I do mean gritty in the same sense you do. I also mean it to mean that there are not a zillion levels/steps/grades of values.  A minimal number of choices means that two people will differ by a larger amount, even if their numbers are very close. Perhaps grainy is the word I mean - perhaps it's obvious why I confused them.

2. I really like the concepts of Nature and Profession. It's incredibly stupid to have to have skills for dozens of minor tasks that you should be able to do. It's very similar to TRoS's skill packets, and is an idea that is becoming more attractive, and if I can figure out how to make it workable in Mage Blade, I just might do something similar.

 Thank AlphaZulu games for Mnemonic and Alternacy, which introduced me to the idea. I've since seen it elsewhere (Story Engine calls them Affinities), but I too really  like the idea. Why take a zillion skills when the majority won't be used. Except for my game, for example, I've never seen anyone pick artistic skills - people tend to be functional in their choices (picking combat and athletic skills only). This method seems to opn up possibilities for other skills sets more. Of course, GMs and the game also have a lot to say about that.

3. I'm slightly dubious about your skill - skill system. I'd have to actually see it in various uses to get an idea for how it actually works, but it seems to me to be a little too cut and dried. An objects rating wouldn't make me any less proficient or strong. I would simply have to try much harder to accomplish the task. It makes more sense to me to simply have the object's rating be the TN for your roll. In your examples..

Jonas is pretty damned buff with his 9 (I was under the impression that 8 was your upper limit? Was I mistaken?) strength, and there's that door sitting there with it's door-ness rating of 4. Simple enough for a buff mofo as he. He draws his 9 motes, only needing 2 of the appropriate color to get through, or some combination of stacking.

Jonas the small with his strength of 4 is staring at a steel security door with a rather smug air, and a door-ness rating of 9. It's looking about impossible. Even if he drew all four of the appropriate color, he'd still be short a single success, so he'd have to rely on luck or a boon to get that last one. The chances of him drawing 4 out of 4 motes of the right color are pretty damned slim, though.

Done this way, you keep unity with the rest of the system.

  Yes, and that's what I decided to go back to. The DLs are still associated with skills and/or door-ness, and will be derived from probabilities, if I ever get them figured out! For example, if a hand of 5 gets 3 motes most of the time (the top of the probability curve, that is), then DL 3 is associated with a skill of 5.

   I still need to play with it some, and double check, as I'm still sort of worried that it doesn't work. But I'm going to think about it real hard first...

4. Opposed draws: I've seen no mention of these. There has to be a resolution for them, though. Am I to assume that it's a fairly simple opposed draw, with each attempting to beat the other's draw. In some tasks, I would think that they have to beat a certain TN as well. For example..

 Hopefully, you can see what I mean above that every roll is an opposed draw. It's just that some of them (against situations or objects) are transparently opposed.

<snip>{/b]

Do I have the right of it, or do you have something else worked out?[/quote]

  That's mostly right. Though I'm still leaning towards skill-TN. For example, the TN associated with a Targetness of 3 (an average target, as opposed to a moving tiny target with targetness 8) is 2. Jonas the Shooty (Bow C6 - cyan because it's a precision skill) will draw 4 motes (Bow 6 - TN 2), and Jon the Clutzy (Bow 2) won't draw any, as he's simply too clumsy (average human score is 3)*. Ho could use a Boon or Luck, but he still has to get more successes than Jonas.

<*> A normal human has a strength of 3, for example. Strength of 1 might correspond to a quadriplegic,  and 2 to a paraplegic, as a way to gauge the effect - here's what I mean by grainy.

  Aidan

[Mike Holmes]

Lance, I'd thought you'd already read my rant on the myth of opposed rolls. What Aidan has works fine. Are there "opposed rolls" in AD&D? Nope, totally unneccessary unless you want them for some particular reason.


I had an idea. This system would seem to be perfect for a "pushing" system. As you draw, you can count how many "successes" you have so far. When you get to the end, and you still don't have enough, perhaps you can push your luck. You can keep drawing, but there's some negtive repercussion. Like, perhaps losing the extra Motes from the Caern for a while or something like that.

I was thinking that, in general terms, that it would be neat to have character setbacks (like combat damage, or mental problems, or whatever) be represented by having Motes removed from the Caern. If you want to be really harch about it, replace them with Black Motes to keep the odds the same, but increase the odds of fate kicking in.

What do you think?

I like the idea of it for "advancement" as well. Adding motes of a particular color doesn't really change the character's overall effectiveness. But it does mean that he changes internally, and that he can lose more motes before becoming less effective.

Just some random thoughts.

Mike

[Lance D. Allen]

I have read your rant, but it's been awhile. And yes, while it may technically be a myth, the system works out entirely differently in this case. The case of a TN is more of a threshold of "successes" to beat, rather than an opposed roll. I also highly dislike the idea of someone else's ability (or an object self-ness rating) reducing your ability. In reality, your ability isn't reduced by difficulty, it simply means you must try harder or do better to succeed.

Do me a favor. Do me a "brute force" spreadsheet for this game using these effects:

difficulty x -vs- ability y

y-x=z draws chances of success.

and

y draws, minimum needed x successes.

then allow it for various difficulties and abilities. assume the color is cyan.

If the results are similar over numerous attempts, I'll be convinced. I somehow think they won't be, though.

All of this is purely speculative. If I knew how to build one, I'd do it myself rather than asking you to, but my command of Excel isn't that good. And regardless of the results, Taalyn is, of course, free to use either method, despite my preferences.

[Mike Holmes]

I'm going to change my mind on this one, and bring up some other issues. Lance is right (thanks for making me look closer). Here's my reasoning.

If you go with all unopposed, then the opponent does not have his motes taken into account. This isn't automatically a problem, but given the fact that I like simul resolution, I would have a problem with it, even if just  personally. So, you want to have opposed rolls for anything that has motes.

I'm guessing that doors aren't going to be rated by motes, so they should just have TNs to bash down or to lockpick. I can't see a GM taking the time to assemble a Caern for a door. So this is one system that could demand a dual system just because of it's peculiarities.

That said, the inanimate world could have a GM Caern, that the GM used for all resolutions, OTOH. This might be good to have at the very least to represent NPCs. Otherwise you'd have to build an NPC Caern each time you went up against an NPC.

In fact that could be a theme. Only the PCs, and maybe a few important NPCs might have unique Caerns. Everyone else has a standard Caern, and are differentiated only by skills. OTOH, I could see that not being all that palatable in some ways, either.

The other option is to use the current system, "trade blows" and not worry about motes for the "defender". I use those in quotes because it does lead to some interesting situations. Basically you'll need to have something like "initiative" for contests like chess. Anything in which the characters interfere with each other.

I'm voting for the Simul opposed for when rated characters go against each other, and using just TNs for anything less important than the most important NPCs (much like Whispering Vault would do).

Mike

[taalyn]

Lance,

Using my brute forced odds, and balanced caerns, a hand of 3, for example, will get 2 successes, on average. A hand of 6 will get 3, on average. In fact, except for larger hands (past 16 or so), the "halve it" method supplies standard, average numbers of successes gained.

So, I draw my 6 motes (getting 3 successes), and you draw your 4 (getting 2 successes) that results in, on average, 1 success for me (3-2).

If I take my skill (6), subtract yours (4) - I get 2 motes, which will get 1 success, on average. Same result.

I've mentioned my dislike for the term "successes" when there's a threshhold to reach, so that's part of the reasoning behind the subtraction. If the opponent is another PC, or an important NPC, I'd certainly use actual draws instead of this simplification. The use of the "one-handed draw", though, is that it can model unopposed actions as opposed ones, but transparently.  Or vice versa. TNs are correlated with skill level, so it's unclear whether it's all unopposed or all opposed...

You're not the first to object - I wonder why that is? Is it counterintuitive? One thing I particularly like is that is does set upper limits: there is a point where people will not succeed in reading latin, or climbing Everest, unless they are very skilled. Damn all that anything is possible stuff! At least, it's not possible unless magic comes into play...

Mike,

"Pushing" your Luck is a feature already! Push a mote of Luck, and you can add 1 mote to your draw. Failure wll have more drastic results, of course. There's also this thing called a Gather, usually used in magic. A Gather can also result in loss of Luck,  temporary changes to one's caern, and so on.

The changes to the Caern idea is great - I thought of it too! This is how spells (aka weaves) are maintained. Say my invisibility spell cost me 6 motes, 2 of which are magenta. If I use 2 magenta motes from my caern, I am concentrating, and the spell will stay in effect until I let go of those motes. This will (usually) have minimal effect on the odds of my particular caern, but it's not without its dangers.

As to adding and subtracting from the caern - too much bookkeeping. My players didn't like it, and neither did I. Plus, if the caern is supposed to represent the metaphysical make-up of a character, without extenuating circumstances, it shouldn't change. Bob's "Bobness" remains the same, he just becomes more effective at utilizing his own energies. Now, if Bob gets turned into a werewolf, or is cursed/blessed, then there's a case for caern change, but otherwise...

As to your change of heart comments...

Suppose all draws are unopposed. The TN is correlated with skill, so calling it unopposed is sort of a misnomer. The opposer is represented, in the value of the TN subtracted. Golem #4's golemness is 8, which is why the TN is 4. Even though the golem isn't drawing directly, he's likely to get 4 successes if he does, so it's almost as if he did draw.

Suppose all draws are opposed. The TN comes from the opposing skill, but the opposition doesn't actually draw, so it's not quite opposed, either. I tend to see it as an all-opposed system, hidden behind difficulties, at any rate.

Doors are rated by motes, because even if I say it's a door of difficulty 3, that's the same as saying it's doorness is 5 or 6. That is, relative to the average door (3), it's pretty dang good at doing it job. Everything is rated in motes, because motes (of Yliaster, also known as Ki or Prana or the Force...) are what make up everything. No motes = does not exist.

You're absolutely right in guessing that the GM uses a single caern (except for significant NPCs). Average together all possible caerns, and you end up with a balanced caern, 5 (or whatever) motes of each color, plus the 3 Fates (black, white, and Fate/irridescent/shiny). That's what  is used for most GM draws.  I wonder how you see this being unpalatable in some cases? What bugs you about it?

  Aidan