Off-Balance Resolution: A mechanic looking for a home

[Daniel Solis]

A mechanic just jumped out at me over breakfast, but I'm having trouble thinking of a setting or genre in which it would be most ideally suited. It's a mechanic without a context.

Off-Balance Task Resolution

Tasks are resolved by rolling your dice and hoping the outcome lies between the rankings of two stats. This means that having those two stats be as different as possible is preferable. A well-balanced character is actually a disadvantage.

What sort of gameplay does this encourage? What sort of game would be ideally suited to having a mechanic like this?

[Callan S.]

I have a hard enough time analyzing mechanics that also present their goal. Those without a goal just leave me dumbfounded. I don't know what to judge it against and I feel all I could do is to begin by suggesting a goal...which someone else probably wouldn't agree is the right one to judge it by.

[Bob McNamee]

It could actually suit D&D style characters/characatures...

I'm Mr. 18/00 Str not too bright Fighter, or I'm MR weakling mega Brain Wizard....

Genre and Gameplay?

Hmm, D&D style fantasy genre doesn't really apply to this mechanic to me.

I'd say it could mesh with some sort of Watchment style supers game...where being the type of person who dresses up to do your thing indicates some level of imbalance and disfunction... especially if they were supers more in the sense of wearing the clothes,and less the having the powers.

Rolling between two stats for success... perhaps thats the only way to have a non-disfunctional approach to problem solving.

It would be cool if you had several stats that combined variously for different types of task resolution, to prevent any really simple stat decisions. It also means that it would be likely that at least one type of resolution would be a marginal type...

Say you had...
Body
Smarts
Luck
Quickness
Personality
Guts

And created, say,using d10 (lets say you have to distribute 30 pts)
Captian Wonder,"The Greatest thing since Sliced Bread"
a flying brick, media darling of a 4 color hero

Body 10
Smarts 3
Luck 6
Quickness 7
Personality 3
Guts 1

Now hes obviously best at straight out fighting...just stand toe to toe Rocky style AKA Body/Guts-10/1

not too bad at at daring feats of bravery,  quick  reactive blocks AKA Quickness/Guts- 7/1

Good at Impressing the press (by his forceful presence) AKA Body/Personality- 10/3

but heaven forbid he have to do a real interview, with real questions AKA Smarts/Personality- 3/3 (yikes gotta roll a 3 or you flub up)

or depend on a flashy risky move to rescue the falling girl... AKA Quickness/ Luck- 7/6... pretty risky

I wouldn't want to risk talking the gunman out of shooting and taking me hostage instead AKA Personality/Guts 3/1

Strangely enough he would be good at Body/Smarts problems (an example of which I can't think of- maybe hands on mechanical rather than theory?) with a Body/Smarts of 10/3

------------
This kind of thing might lead to some surpising areas of weakness in a character... hmmm.

Anyway.... any of this seem interesting to you, Gobi?

[Andrew Martin]

Off-Balance Task Resolution
Tasks are resolved by rolling your dice and hoping the outcome lies between the rankings of two stats. This means that having those two stats be as different as possible is preferable. A well-balanced character is actually a disadvantage.

What sort of gameplay does this encourage? What sort of game would be ideally suited to having a mechanic like this?

It would work well for a roll under skill/attribute system, where disadvantages and penalties were expressed on the same scale. For example using the the Fudge scale, Rocky the flying squirrel with Legendary Gliding is hit by a flying cannonball that does Poor damage. Now Rocky's player has to roll above Poor but below Legendary to continual gliding with no problems. Rolling Poor or less means that Rocky is affected adversely by the cannonball. Rolling above Legendary means that something else interesting happened. (Please note that I'm not using the standard 4DFudge dice rolling technique, but another technique I recently discovered!)

[Chris Goodwin]

This may not help you at all, but for my Cars: the Game I use two separate die rolls.  Each car has only one stat (Cool).  To hit another car you have to roll less than or equal to your Cool on a d10.  If you hit, to destroy it you have to roll greater than its Cool on a d10.  

I would say that a situation in which you'd want to roll over one and under another of your own stats would be one in which the two stats are directly opposed.

[Daniel Solis]

After some thought and discussion, it seems like any particular task would require one stat to be advantageous and another to be disadvantageous. That means any tasks which don't immediately meet these requirements aren't worth rolling. Depending on the game, this could mean an automatic failure or success.

The tasks that actually do meet these prerequisites are surprisingly slim of one uses the traditional vanilla stats like strength, intelligence and so forth. I think the stats would have to be more based on dichotomous traits of personality and attitude.

For example, on one extreme you have Daring and on the other you have Wisdom. You have made a daredevil character with high daring and low wisdom. In order to do a daring action, your roll must below Daring but above Wisdom. Likewise, to do a wise action, your roll must be below Wisdom, but above Daring. That means wise actions are an automatic failure for your daredevil.

Hm. That may be a bit too harsh. Perhaps having gradations of success dependent upon where the roll falls within the trait's spectrum is a better solution. Geez, if only there were an actual setting or context for this system, that would make refining it a lot easier.

Okay, let's assume we continue with the Trait Spectrum idea. That is, pairs of opposed traits.

We have Daring/Wisdom. Are there any other dichotomous personality traits that immediately jump out at anyone? Perhaps Selfishness/Charity.

And what of skills? I suppose if a skill system is included, and no one's saying there has to be one, it could act as a simple "nudging" mechanism to augment die rolls towards more preferable placement within the trait spectrum.

For example, you want to do a daring action, jumping from a moving car. Unfortunately, your roll is 5 increments away from the "success" range of the Daring/Wisdom trait spectrum. With a relevant skill, say, "JUmping from moving cars x 7," you can nudge the die roll so that it is, at most, 7 increments closer to the success range. Thus, your action is a success.

[Marhault]

Two things spring to mind regarding this.

One is something I read in [Discernment] v2.0--a revised experiment where it was suggested by Mark D. Eddy that the Seven Cardinal Virtues be directly opposed to the Seven Deadly Sins.  Note that I haven't read the game this thread refers to, I just remember the idea being mentioned.

The other thing is that the descriptions I've heard of Pendragon (specifically in Ron's Essay Simulationism: The Right to Dream) include a similar mechanic, albeit slanted towards character behaviors rather than character abilities.  Again this is hearsay, I haven't played Pendragon, but it might be a place to look for examples of matched pairs. . .

[happyelf]

First time posting; I found this idea interesting enough to register for.

One idea here would be the notion of equlibrium. The idea being that these two qualities are in a sort of harmonic tension, and if you roll 'outside' them, then your character has veered too far in one direction one the other and become imbalanced.

For instance imagine a pair of combat stats- power and finesse. A character swings a sword using these stats. If you roll between them, then you've managed to both use enough brute force, and coordinate your strike in order to make it accurate. If you roll 'outside' power, then your PC has been too clumsy and forceful to be accurate. If you roll 'outside' finesse, then they've been too dainty and not put enough muscle behind the swing.

This could allow you to compress narritive by dealing with two issues in each die roll- for instance, in the above example you could roll 'to hit' and 'damage' at the same time. This raises some issues of it's own, but those issues could be resolved easily enough- for instance, if your enemy is really easy to hit(ie had a much lower finesse rating than you), rolling 'outside' power might not count as a failure, and rolling 'within' power might net you a bonus above base success.

It would also perhaps make for interesting skill contests- perhaps somebody can't use a special technique unless their enemy first rolls 'outside' of power, suggesting that that are acting kinda clumsy at the moment. Likewise, a particular stance could be adopted to render one immune from the liabilities of rolling 'outside' finesse.

As for a setting, well one obvious idea would be something martial-artsy or asian in wich you could use the yin/yang cliche as the basis for your system. This would also provide you with some criteria to decide how different pairs function. You could even define characters a 'yin' or 'yang' to determine wich stat of eiach pair is 'high'(To be useful, this idea would have to serve purposes relating to other features such as character creation).

And of course this could apply to a lot of different stuff. In social settings one could be assertive and perceptive. If you roll 'outside' assertive, you've been too bull-headed and not paid enough attention to your subject. If you roll 'outside' perceptive, then you haven't managed to push your agenda enough to achive anything. And the above details would apply here too- if you're just threatening a wimpy guy, not being perceptive enough enough wouldn't matter(but if you do manage to be perceptive too, that might gain you a benefit).

And of course, what you're rolling against would effect things too- an enemy's heavy iron armor might modify the dice roll towards finesss, so that an 'outside finesse' failure (too dainty) is more likely, but an 'outside power' failure (too clumsy) is less likely.

I've got a few other ideas about how this would work, and some ideas on how to ensure it just all didn't end up canceling itself out. And some wacky ideas, like letting players roll whatever sided dice they wanted to resolve actions. But it's not really worth going into too much depth, especially in a first post.

[Daniel Solis]

I've got a few other ideas about how this would work, and some ideas on how to ensure it just all didn't end up canceling itself out. And some wacky ideas, like letting players roll whatever sided dice they wanted to resolve actions. But it's not really worth going into too much depth, especially in a first post.

How about a second post? You've really piqued my interest with these ideas. :)

[happyelf]

Well there isn't really much more to say on a basic level, I just have a few notions as to how the mechanics would break down. Also, there may be some flaw in the idea i'm missing that would render it's pointless, but I can't think of one. Some of this ight seem a bit complex, but I think it would all come down to a pretty simple set of rules.

Here's a few idle thoughts:

One mechanic could be the idea that you can deliberatly roll outside, if you don't mind doing so. For instance if your enemy is big and clumsy enough, rolling 'outside' power may, as noted, not count as a failure. There may be an additional advantage to rolling 'inside' anyway, but if you're just interested in wacking them, you might be happy with the base success. Here it is in detail-

Say you have a character who has Power 8 and Finesse 4. You're fighting Thuggy McThuggerston, who has a finesse of 2, and since that's half(or less that half) of your own finesse, you have a 'finesse advantage' against him or something, so 'failing finesse'(by rolling outside of power) doesn't count as a failure, and if you still succeed in 'rolling inside'(by rolling between the two), you could gain an extra bonus, like maybe it allows you to do Exploding Crane Stance on him next turn or something.

But let's say you're not intersted in going all Crane on his ass, you just want to hit him. So all you need to do is avoid rolling below 4. To do this, you may have the option of tilting the dice somehow- maybe you can use a particular technique that adds +2 to your roll, or maybe you can just roll a bigger dice! But either way, you deliberatly imbalance your roll because one extreme benefits you better than the other at that point.

Of course, this might have it's own liabilities and so on, and it would probably be limited in some way- for instance, if your main option is dice size, it becomes important wich of each pair is 'high' for your character*. If you can increase the odds of you rolling a high number, then you have the option of choosing to roll 'outside' of that higher value- in other words, you can play to that side of the equasion as your strength.

You could argue that the same goes for low dice and rolling low, but for the sake of balance it would probably be best to rule out d4's since they'd offer the chance of a low value without the posibility of a high value, unlike say, a d20, wich would make a value over a certain value more likely, but still offer the posibility of a low roll. The same goes for really low stats(of course, really low stats would be their own liability).

And some interesting stuff could be worked off that, such as the effects of imbalancing oneself. If somebody uses d20's all game, it could cost them in some way, even move them out of harmony with the universe. Perhaps rolling the highest or lowest number on a dice would count as a failure or partial failure, and might have other consequences- especially if it's a big number like a 12 or a 20, or just a big dice. This would in turn rebalance things a bit, and prevent low-dice rolling from becoming to prevalent(after all, on a d6 you'd have a 1 in 3 chance of failing or suffering some other ill effect!). Rolling on your value might have an impact as well- like say rolling a 10 when your power is 10 might count as a critical success with a 'power' bonus of some sort(rolling on your finesse would net you a finesse bonus instead). Of course, if you roll it on a d10, things might get really interesting.

*Another idea is the matter of wich of the pair is high. It could just be that you roll them, or roll the margin between them, but other options are possible.

For instance, your character could be a 'yin' or 'yang' character, and wich they were could determine wich of each pair was high. So if you're a yin character, then the 'yin' side of the pair would be high, and hence you'd be able to roll bigger dice or whatever to push for more 'yin'- like outcomes. I won't give a literal example since I forget wich is wich, and the two might not be the best terms for the difference, but generally it's a sound concept- having an imbalance as a basic part of the character, being able to express that imbalance as a matter of course, but having that imbalance shape your options and possbly the type of ill effects that you'd suffer from being imbalanced.

There are other options too, such as the possibility that some characters are on the yin or yang side, but simply have the pair high and low based on what they roll or whatever. That might make things more versatile- otherwise the game might be dominated by two different archetypes, one powerful, assertive, ect, and the other perceptive, finessed, and so on. But there are other ways to break up this regularity, also, and the value of the stats, wether high or low, would have their own impact.

For instance, if you have a low 'low' stat, then you're more likely to roll 'in' and succeed on your action, but you'd suck at that stat and that would effect you in other ways (such as Thuggy in the example above, so clumsy that being clumsy against him isn't a drawback for many opponents, and being agile against him can net them an additional advantage). So some characters might succeed at being balanced by sucking at certain things, but since their stats in those things are so low, they'd be out of balance again anyway.

Hmm. . . interesting. Such a system would seem to suggest a philosophy by wich perfect harmony is unobtainable and any action, even a seemingly 'balanced' one, will upset the balance. That's not a bad themantic device, really. It could even be made a feature of character progression or experience.

A final thought would be that yin and yang (or whatever) could be tallied up in some way, maybe as part of experience or part of the games process. So, in the example above with Thuggy, say you hit him, but don't roll 'outside' of power. As noted above, that would get you some kind of fniesse-related benefit. Perhaps that benefit is a 'yin point' or a 'yang point'(wichever is asociated with finesse) wich you could store as XP, use to determine the outcome of our action, spend on another action fo soem sort, or something.

So the system would be based off of the basic roll, modifiers to that roll, dice size, and possibly some kind of mechanic object that would effect the state of play(such as whatever bonus you'd get from showing finesse against Thuggy). And the whole thig topped off by this interesting quanry between maintaining a balance, and upsetting it. I'm tempted to do the whole thig up right now in shorthand, but that might be a bit much for the moment. Maybe later.

[Marhault]

Damn!  I just read the last few posts in this thread, and my jaw dropped.  Suddenly, this idea seems not only interesting, but workable!  Not to mention that you might have found the mechanic a home. . .

So, the key points here are:

1.  Two diametrically opposed traits.
2.  Which of those two traits will be high, and which low?
3.  What are the values of those traits?
4.  The range between the two values represents a success, while rolling over the high trait, or under the low trait represents an overbalancing of the action in favor of that trait, and thus a failure (or partial failure).
5.  The degree to which a roll favors one trait or the other can be used to determine the extent of the successful action, including it's specific effects.

I think the Yin/Yang background works great for this idea.  The feel of karmic balance and lack thereof is exactly what is evoked by the dice rolls.

My take:  The standard rolling range is 1d10.  Each character must choose which trait to be high, and which to be low.  The difference being that the use of different die types would affect only the chances of overbalancing toward the high trait, and not the chances of overbalancing toward the low trait, or the chances of a balanced success.  This would probably be a GM or Rules imposed effect, based on the character's Karmic Balance, if weighted toward the low trait, a d8 is rolled, if the high, a d12.  Karmic balance is effected whenever an overbalance is rolled, gaining a yin or yang point, which would build up over time.  The character might be able to voluntarily vent some of it into a roll before the GM or the mechanics force him to do so.  If a particular task is deemed to be weighted one way or the other, a + or - can be added to the roll.  

This is a decidedly abstract mechanic.  The biggest problem I see is that for a single roll, there is nothing to indicate or account for the task's difficulty.  Walking across a bed of coals requires the same balance of characteristics regardless of the length of the walk, however, it is much easier to maintain that balance over the shorter distance.  Perhaps more difficult tasks require multiple rolls?

[M. J. Young]

Sorry, I don't get it.

If we take the example of rolling between strength and agility, then the character who has the best chance of hitting his opponent is the one who has the maximum score in one and the minimum score in the other--say a 10 strength and a 1 agility. Yet the assumption of the mechanic is that somehow this is logical. I would expect that the character with a 10 in both would have the best chance to hit, but not only does he have the smallest chance to hit, his chance to hit is matched by the character who has 1 in both. So unless I'm missing something, this mechanic encourages very unbalanced characters and makes them most effective.

What you're looking for, really, would seem to be a way of opposing the two traits vectorily--such as making it such that a character with a 5 agility and a 5 strength has to roll between -5 and 5; the roll system would itself be awkward, as the best chance you've got here is roll d20 and subtract 10.

(Mentioning vector addition causes me to realize that the system would be significantly enhanced if you could actually add the traits vectorily--that means place strength on the X axis and agility on the Y axis and measure the distance between (X, Y) and (0,0)--but that means doing the Pythagorean Theorem for every use (or having a table that does it for you), so it seems too heavy on the math.)

The solution to the problem of the dice is to add the two traits together and roll lower than the sum--exactly the same odds, easier mechanic.

I think.

Although it does lose the flavor of knowing whether you rolled too much to one side or the other.

Multiverser does use some "roll in the middle" mechanics, in response to what we call a "threshold defense". The concept basically says that certain defenses eliminate all the weakest attacks, so only the attacks which roll at least a certain value actually get through, while they still have to be below the maximum value that will hit. It's possible to close the gap such that there is no roll that will succeed, but this can't usually be maintained.

--M. J. Young

[Shreyas Sampat]

I think it can make more sense if we tie one stat to the obstruction rather than the actor.  If I'm attacking someone, then I have to roll between my Sword ability and his Avoid ability; if I roll "outside" Sword, then I didn't actually execute my attack very well; if I roll "outside" Avoid, then my attack was avoided, regardless of how well it was done.

So evenly matched opponents have the same result patterns, regardless of how good they are independent of each other.

The coolness comes with knowing the cause of actions failing, I guess.

[Marhault]

If we take the example of rolling between strength and agility, then the character who has the best chance of hitting his opponent is the one who has the maximum score in one and the minimum score in the other--say a 10 strength and a 1 agility. Yet the assumption of the mechanic is that somehow this is logical. I would expect that the character with a 10 in both would have the best chance to hit, but not only does he have the smallest chance to hit, his chance to hit is matched by the character who has 1 in both. So unless I'm missing something, this mechanic encourages very unbalanced characters and makes them most effective.

Right on both counts, M.J., but I think you have missed something, based on that example.

These traits don't exist in a vacuum, they are linked to one another.  Further, there are really two kinds of traits, high and low.  High traits have a "roll under" function, and low traits have a "roll over" function.  This is very different than most RPGs, where all traits are independant, and are better at high values.  In other words, most games have your stats improve the further they are above zero.  No negative values are used (that I can think of).  The quality of one of these traits is not measured this way, but rather a low trait is better the further under the midpoint of the range it is, and a high trait is better the further over the midpoint of the range it is.

Let's assume, for the sake of example, that Strength and Agility are a linked pair, and that Strength is high, and Agility is low.  Let's also assume a range of 1-10 for our normal values, with a 1d10 being the normal roll.  The midpoint of this range is 5.5.  This means that Strength (high) is mighty at 10, and weak at 6, and that Agility (low) is good at 1, and clumsy at 5.  A character with fairly average stats might have Str(H) 8, Agi(L) 3.  He would succeed at a balanced task on a roll of 4-7, or, if you want to make ties successes, 3-8

I hope that actually made sense to someone other than me. . .

The solution to the problem of the dice is to add the two traits together and roll lower than the sum--exactly the same odds, easier mechanic.

I think.

This gives the same chance of simple success. . .  I think.  There are a few things lost in the translation, however.  First, as you point out, you don't know that you failed due to leaning more towards one trait or the other.  You also lose the idea that the traits are linked to one another.  

Most importantly (to me, anyway) you lose some interesting strategy playing with the number ranges.  This again assumes a 1d10 roll as standard resolution and that trait values never go beyond the 1-10 range.

Altering the die type to 1d12 would increase the tendency to fail, especially by overbalancing toward the high trait.  Altering the die type to 1d8 would decrease the tendency to overbalance high, and increase your odds of success.  Adding a die to the roll, and adding it's value to the first die would decrease chances of overbalancing low and increase chances overbalancing high.  These are just generalities, and I would certainly due some probabilities analysis before trying to use this in a game, but it seems to me to introduce a very fun element of strategy as far as which trait in a pair would be high, and how much currency (Yay, a Ron term!) I would spend to push my high and low traits away from the midpoint.

[M. J. Young]

Just for the record, decreasing the number of pips on the die does increase your chance to roll below the minimum.

Let's say you've got to roll at least four and not greater than seven.

d12: above: 5/12=42%; in range: 4/12=33%; below range: 3/12=25%.
d10: above: 3/10=30%; in range: 4/10=40%; below range: 3/10=30%.
d8: above: 1/8=12%; in range: 4/8=50%; below range: 3/8=38%.
d6: above: 0/6=0%; in range: 3/6=50%; below range: 3/6=50%.
d4: above: 0/4=0%; in range 1/4=25%; below range: 3/4=75%.

Because the smaller die has fewer sides, the sides which fall below the minimum end represent a greater proportion of the total possible results, and therefore a greater probability of occurence.

Yes, I did miss the part about scores scaling in opposite directions; that's a good feature, except that it will be difficult to determine which ones scale which direction. Perhaps instead something on the order of all scores scale up to ten, but when you're rolling between you subtract one from eleven to get the minimum.

What happens if the character winds up with his minimum above his maximum?

--M.  J. Young