Duality: Action Resolution Plan

[sirogit]

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Action Resolution is done in Scenes, after the GM describes the situation, players decide what they want their characters to do and the GM decides what other characters do. There is no order of iniative, all results are resolved simultaneously. Action does not nessecarily begin simultaneously, it starts as soon as any character wishes to act in a conflict.

Characters may cooperate to increase each other's effeincentcy via the
Assist mechanic. If character A's action is somehow supporting character B's action, than character B adds character A's degree of success to character B's success. This is not nessecarily mutual, such as if character A was providing a distraction for character B to pickpocet, however, character B's pickpocketing is not assisting character A's distracting.

When characters are all trying to acheive the same effect, such as in combat, the action uses the Gestalt mechanic, whereas everyone adds their degrees of success to the groups degree of success.

A tactical bonus(+ 1 to 3) can be given if a character is approaching a problem in a way that is advantagous, or a penalty(- 1 to 3) if it is disadvantagous.

So, the degree of success for a character is found by:
Relevnt trait +/- Tactical bonus + Assisting character's degree of success -Penalties*

*Possible penalties would be Damage, Bad Reputation for a social conflict where the other side is aware who they are and it is relevant, Mental Influence in a contrary way to thier action, or using the relevant trait of a Nature that is not Active, making the penalty equal to their Struggle.

If the character wishes to invest energy in the action, than they roll as many six sided dice as they subtract from their energy dice pool, or twice as many dice as they subtract if the relevant trait is their Energy Trait.

If 1 or 3, add one success.
If 2, add one success, and reroll that dice.*
If 4 ot 5, don't add a success
If 6, subtract one success.

*If you roll more 2's in one action than your Struggle - your Non-active Nature's dice pool/5, than you switch Natures at the end of the Scene.

Actions against active opposistion may be resisted by whatever relevant trait of the oppoistsion, actions against more static conditions would have resisting traits assigned to them by the GM(Extremely Thorough data seceurity(4) on a computer, if one tries to hack into the information)

After everyone has figured their degree os success in a scene(And the GM figures his degrees of success in secret.) The players narrate how they go about doing what they want to do, with the following limitations(If these come up, the GM may stop the narration, rewind it if nessecary, and describe how events transpired against them, also, the GM may wish to narrate oppoistion just to bring tension, while still allowing the group to succeed. This should probably be handled carefully.):

If they narrate accomplishing something that they did not get higher degress of success than.(Either singularly or as a group.)

Assigning of damage, such as to someone's reputation, body, or mental state. This is set according to a mechanic. Characters who are more successfull than thir opponents may cuase any effect to them that does not last after the scene, such as twisting an arm painfully, throwing them in a coffin, or just firing off a glib retort.

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Damage:
When there is some element of danger involved in the conflict, special rules apply.

For the action, everyone has a set Danger Level starting at 0. This need not be recorded.

If there is some sort of Environmental Hazard present in the scene, raise the danger level 1 to 5, dependning on how dangerous and hard to avoid it is.

If a character takes a risky action, such as jumping across a cliff to assail a foe, double the Hazard's danger level for that character. If a character takes a blatantly suicidle action, such as jumping down a steep cliff to assail a foe, quadruple the Hazard's danger level.

If during the scene, opposing character's are trying to bring danger opon other characters, such as say, shooting them, add their success at the action to the Danger Level.

The danger level is than reduced by one's degree of success in an action that is possibiliy relevent to avoiding the danger, and by the character's Fortitude trait. Any remaining damage is done to the character.

This is mostly implying physical damage, other kinds of "damage" are possible. Being damage to reputation, and Mental influence(Scaring others, Manipulating them, Seducing them, etc.)(I'd appreciate any other suggestions of cases of permanant effect.)

For the most part, Environmental Hazards don't apply to these types of damage, unless espicially called for, such as attempts to make someone go insane in a nuthouse.

Fortitude may apply to mental influences, so it would reduce damage to it, but it would not apply to damages to reputation. however, damage to a person's reputation is reduced by their current posistive reputation, if any.

A person's damage level is how much damage remained, ignored if it is the same or less than damage they have already incurred. A person who received 1 degree of physical damage (Scratched) is none the worse if they received another 1 degree of physical damage again. Physical damage or mental influence degrades(Changes to 1 less degree) at the same rate, though I'm not sure about rules for the dissapearance of damages to reputation.

5 - Never
4 - 16 days
3 - 4 days
2 - 2 days
1 - 1 days

*Normally, damage is independant to Nature.

Mental Influence should be roleplayed with appropiate severity, and Physical damage causes a pentaly of it's level to all traits. 5 physical damage means the Nature is dead.

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Note about the exclusion of tool bonuses:

How good tools are is figured into the trait level, which assumes that you are using appropiate tools, as such they imply ownership, but their may be situations where you can't use the trait because your access to your tools is restricted.

So, since some weapons are typically more usefull in a fight, they should be gauged in a character's traits accordingly, even if they may have relatively the same mastery of the weapon. So different kinds of weapon traits may look like:

Good with fists(2)
Good with swords(3)
Good with pistols(4)
Good with semiautomatics(5)


[/i]

[Mike Holmes]

What would you like comments on?

I do have one comment. Why is it the two that eplodes? Just for color (two=duality)? Wouldn't it be a little easier to pick out the 1s?

Just a thought.

Mike

[sirogit]

Yes, that's mainly for color, you could be right about it being too much of a sacrifice for it.

I was mostly going for very general comments, such as pointing out glaring flaws, parts that you think I should expand upon, etc.

Of paticular intereast would be:

The Energy mechanic. I want the system to be fast, and a large amount of die rolling(plus rerolling 1 in every 6 dice, while keeping track of the number of times dice are rerolled) could be an unnesecary delay. I'm thinkinf of somewhere around 10 - 20 energy dice per character would be available per session. Too many dice for most people's tastes?

What I want from the Energy mechanic is a simulation of characters running a risk of switching their Active Nature when adding dice to an action, a risk that increases when more dice are used on a single action.
I'd like there to always be some risk of the Natures switching, even with 1 die rolled, if very little chance, which is the driving factor behind the inclusion of re-rolling.

Is there some other method that could meet the basic requirements I mentioned above that would play quicker, more coherently or have other advantages?

P.S. I realize that I'm presenting the information rather disorderly, I should have a website up sometime.