Well, I've been working on a set of game mechanics, off and on, for a few years now. I've shown bits and pieces of them to individual people, but never just posted them. I just sent 'em to a Christian Gaming Mailing List I subscribe to, as well as posting them here. I've edited it, as it seemed to be incredibly long, and jumbled together with questions I had for everyone, so I've changed things a bit. I've posted the mechanics to a website (and thus deleted 'em from this post). Please take a look, and especially PLEASE be brutally honest about them - I prefer that to empty praise or useless "that sucked" comments (though I've found this forum to not do such - the reason I'm posting 'em here!) Okay, here goes…

The website where the mechanics can be found is at: http://www.geocities.com/dan_worthington/Professional/mg-mechanics.html

So...What's everyone think? *crosses fingers*

Daniel

[ This Message was edited by: archangel_2 on 2001-12-26 14:31 ]

On 2001-12-26 03:37, archangel_2 wrote:
These are not attributes saying how good you are at something, but rather it shows how focused your character is on an area in his/her life.

Beginning characters start with 3 points to place between the three Foci, distributed any way the player wishes to do so.

a good idea (though FAR from an "official rule") would be to have, for every two points spent into a positive ability or skill, one point put into a restriction or limitation.

All of these skills and abilities need to be explained in the description of the character.

Please note that not every skill or ability is useful with each of the three Foci, but it would be a bad idea for a character not to have any skills or abilities to use as a Focus (otherwise, you'll end up focusing on one, and improve it to the detriment of the other two). Then again, if you want to RP Pinhead the Barbarian, maybe you don't care that mental and spiritual are at zero!

Anyway, in this section, I wanted to include some very specific traits (which is part of my misgiving with having the rest so loose - if part of it is loose and part of it is detailed, that'd give an uneven feel to it, wouldn't it?) The game is going to be a Christian Science Fiction game, basically, so I wanted to include various Christian elements. I wanted there to be three different sets of traits for Christians:

-Snip-

As you can see, that gets pretty detailed, and that's one of the areas that I DEFINATELY want to keep, but it seems to fly in the face of the loose system for the other traits...

RULES RESOLUTION
When you've added up the Focus, Trait, and Gift for a particular situation to be resolved, now is the time to figure out the difficulty rating and number of successes needed.

Target Number is fairly straight forward. Rate how difficult what they are trying from 2 to 10 (1's would be automatic, so if you're rolling, it has to be higher than that!). That's the target number. 4 is average difficulty, with anything above a 6 being extremely difficult to do. You can reduce the difficulty number by 1 for every additional success required, to a maximum of four times, and never lower than a 2. Any roll of 6 allows an extra die to be added to the roll (potentially another success - or more than one, if you keep rolling 6's), and any 1 rolled subtracts one success.

The number of successes required is a bit more involved to determine.

Optional Factors each add 2 successes to the total, but are not required to succeed. So if your character takes an Optional Factor and meets the base successes required (plus any Required Factors), but not the total difficulty number (that has the Optional Factor’s 2 successes added in), then the character succeeds (barely) at the task, but not with the benefit of the Optional Factor.

Here are a few examples:

-Snip-

OPPOSED ACTIONS
Opposed actions work exactly like the general rules, except that the difficulty number is determined by your opponent's dice pool (focus + trait + gifts). You then determine Factors normally.

Next you roll the dice. Whoever’s total roll is higher is the one who will determine what happened. It’s at this point that the “winning” character will determine how many successes he achieved and see what the results were (and to what degree they were). If the winning character’s card value was too low to succeed, then it’s a negative result. (So it is possible to be the determiner, but not succeed.)

COMBAT
each character has 4 Wound Points (more or less, depending on advantages and disadvantages taken).

-Snip-

when a person has a point of damage taken, it is the same as rolling a 1 - subtract one success per success of damage taken (to a maximum of 4) to all actions he tries to do afterwards. So a character who has taken 2 wounds, will automatically have 2 successes taken away.

PUSHING YOURSELF
A character may choose, after the cards are drawn, to push himself to the limit. This means the character trades one point of damage to himself, for one success in whatever he is trying to do. A character may do this only to a maximum of 4 points worth of damage (cumulative with any damage taken already by other means). All normal damage penalties apply, no matter the source of the damage.

Well, there are the basic mechanics I've come up with so far. What's everyone think? *crosses fingers*

OK, sure, post corrections while I'm writing comments. :wink:

Anyhow, ignore any of the above that does not make sense with the newly posted material. Quite a bit clearer now.

Mike

Thanks for the kind input! I've received a few replies on the mailing list I mentioned, and this has generated a number of good ideas and corrections. I haven't posted them yet, as I plan to sort through what you've mentioned and add to these ideas. Then I'll update the website and mention what's changed. But for now, I'll respond to your post (if nothing else to use it as a sounding board for what I'll want to change, as well as to mention a few of the ideas already decided upon...)

"These are not attributes saying how good you are at something, but rather it shows how focused your character is on an area in his/her life."
Hmmm, seems to be a semantic argument at best. Mechanically you have them working very similar to stats in other games, and I'm not seeing too much of a difference. Not too important, anyhow.

"Beginning characters start with 3 points to place between the three Foci, distributed any way the player wishes to do so."
Which gives you ten starting possibilities. FWIF.

"a good idea (though FAR from an "official rule") would be to have, for every two points spent into a positive ability or skill, one point put into a restriction or limitation."
Why not make that official? What's the downside?

"All of these skills and abilities need to be explained in the description of the character."
What does that mean? A sentence, or paragraph written on each? Or just a discussion between the GM and player.

Why sixes?

"The number of successes required is a bit more involved to determine."
Hmmm. This means that with a high enough target 7+ you need to have at least as many dice as the required successes to succeed. Lots of potential preordained failure. Is that intentional? Or are targets above six rare?

In any case, your total dice will never be above (4+3+3) ten, If I read correctly. Given ten dice, lowering the target number by one means one more expected success. Which balances. Any fewer dice (the case for almost every roll) means that the character actually has less of a chance to succeed overall if he lowers the target. Why would any player employ this option (unless he was unaware of the odds and simply makng a tactical mistake)?

OTOH, if you use the opposite rule, increasing your target number by one for an increase in dice, you may have something. In general, this lowers the average expected successes, but it increases the range possible. So, if you absolutely must have four required successes, but only have three dice (and don't want to or can't count on sixes caoming up), you can make the target one higher to get the extra die and have a chance.

Your example makes the tasks seem player defined. Is that intentional?

What do additional one-point wounds do? No effect? Otherwise, pretty cool. Wounding is very harsh, but that may be what you were going for.

I can see it I suppose. Is this point of damage supposed to simulate exhaustion? Can you do it even on something like the aforementioned lockpicking? How fast do you heal these and other wounds?

Well, not too bad. How does this system link into the Sci-Fi aspect?

Well, I went and got carried away. I've updated the game mechanics with all the ideas gleaned from here and the Christian Gamers Guild (plus a few I came up with while just tinkering on the system). It's at the same website as before:

http://www.geocities.com/dan_worthington/Professional/mg-mechanics.html

Take a look and tell me what ya think! Thanks in advance.

Daniel

I don't know if you've changed the rules with respect to this, but:

If you're still using a die pool of d6's, with 1's cancelling successes, any target number of 6 or higher gets insanely difficult, no matter how high the die pool. See, it each die is as likely to roll a 1 as a 6, so your average result remains 0 successes (get as many 1's as 6's) no matter what the die pool is.

If you're counting a "more 1's than successes" situation as a botch, a la Storyteller, botches are always as likely as successes at difficulty 6 (at difficulty 7+, botches are always more likely than successes).

I'd ditch the "1's count as negative successes" rule. It increases the standard deviation too much, and increases handling time.

If you've already done all that, I apologize for being repetetive.

Well, I've altered it from what it was... I was pointed to the way Deadlands does such.

Basically, if you roll more ones than successes, you botch. (Everything you wanted to happen pretty well happens in exact reverse, or some such.) However, if you roll equal or less ones than successes, there is no affect.

One other thing to note: the average difficulty is 4, so there is a lot greater chance, with an average activity, to get a success than to get a one. Also, rolling a 6 allows you to roll an additional die to add to the pool. While this gives yet another chance for a one, the chances of getting a success for a standard action are still far greater than the chance of rolling a one. (This will change with harder tasks, but that only makes sense - the harder it is to accomplish, the greater the chance of botching it up...)

I think it works well, but I'm a bit biased... What's everyone else think?

Daniel

On 2001-12-27 01:21, archangel_2 wrote:
Thanks for the kind input!

FWIF? What's that?

Each character, at character creation, may choose one trait at professional (2) and two at amateur (1) rank. Each character also has 3 extra points to be spent however the player desires. More good traits may be gained on a one for one basis, by spending a point into a bad trait for every point spent into a good trait.

Please note, this is a general guideline, and if a player comes up with a wonderful character that won't work following these guidelines, the GM is the final authority and may throw out any or all of them.

...I decided that would be counter-intuitive to gamers and that d6's were easy enough for both groups to know on an intuitive level, as well as to have a plentiful stock on hand to be able to play.

(potentially another success - or more than one, if you keep rolling 6's)

I thought that by "roll another die" you meant another swing against the target number. But I see the phrase "added to the number". So how do you get more than one success if you are adding the dice together and caomparing versus a target number. Perhaps I'm being dense here and an example would help.

My main reason for including it [target reduction/extra required success] was for Difficulty Numbers higher than 6, but I hadn't realized it probably wouldn't be much good elsewhere...

Given that I didn't understand your die explosion method (and still don't) my comments may have been off. But it still might be problematic in all cases.

You can reduce the Successes Required by adding one (1) point (per success reduced) from the Dificulty Number. This can be done a maximum of four (4) points worth, and not to exceed a Difficulty Number of 6 (which would be just plain dumb to do anyway, as 7+ is impossible to roll on a d6). This allows someone with a smaller Dice Pool to do things, though it makes it harder to do.

Nope. If you have less than six dice a player would always add all he could to the difficulty as he is much mor likely to get successes that way than by rolling. If he has exactly six dice it does not matter either way. If he has more than six dice its a bad idea and you'd only do it if the number of required successes was greater than dice (rare). Or perhaps this could be considered the slow and steady rule.

The other problem is that most tasks could be reduced to zero required successes this way. Anything with less than five required successes, in fact, which is most everything.

Your way only gave them a chance to succeed (another die to roll) in exchange for the same penalty. Is mine too hard? Or did you just not consider it?

Mine accomplishes what you set out to do (make tasks that require more successes than the player has dice possible), but does not have the problems.

Um, additional one point wounds don't do anything after the fourth. After having four successes removed, I don't think more of a penalty is necessary! lol

Right, but it's not unrealistic or anything either. And since it takes an extra rule to say the penalty stops at four, it's just an unnecessary layer of complexity. The player has to remember when to stop accounting. Instead just drop the rule. An advantge of this is that you can make healing proportional to the wound penalties acquired.

But that raises another issue: It shouldn't be handled like normal damage in terms of healing it. My thought would be that to heal this damage (from pushing yourself) requires only a moment or two to catch your breath or relax. Not that hard under ideal circumstances, but certainly not something that's possible in the middle of combat or a chase! Basically, let the "cure" reflect what it was they were doing. Writing a research paper could mean even something physical would be "rest" for such exhaustion!

I kinda agree. It makes sense that exhaustion would be recoverable relatively wwuickly. The problem is that by pushing a character can be made to succeed at nearly impossible tasks automatically. And the only thing holding him back is the recovery time. Too easy. But I like the concept in general.

Howsabout instead of automatic successes, you get extra dice? That makes it a gamble. And BTW, these exhaution points should cause penalties, but shouldn't count as part of the four wounds needed to kill. Or perhaps something like one "real" damage per four exhaustion, so players can run themselves into the ground (after pushing a little you'll need to push more just to overcome the pushing penalties). That would simulate long term weariness well, and limit use of pushing. Keep track of the two (wounds and exhaustion) separately for recovery and death purposes.

Might I suggest faithfulness as a bonus to the exhaustion recovery die roll?


I just read the new section on opposed actions, and I still don't get it. What is the target number (for calculating the number of successes)? By Factors, do you mean required and optional successes? The term seems undefined elsewhere.

Fate points seem kinda generic. Might I suggest Faith points instead, or somthing to drive the religious nature of the game. Reward these for adressing moral themes or something. Otherwise they can work the same mechanically and represent the Spirit of the Deity propelling the character on towards victory. Actually. these would make more sense as your "automatic success" mechanic.

"God does not play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein


Foci advancement: Are we to assume that the numbers on each focus just shift to reflect their use and that the total remains the same? Or do particular ones improve? If the latter you will find folks maxing out quick. If the former, then how does one get a six in a focus if the total can be only four?


That's all I have at the momnent. :wink:

Mike

On 2001-12-27 14:06, archangel_2 wrote:
Well, I've altered it from what it was... I was pointed to the way Deadlands does such.

With your new Foci limits, that means that your focus will be more important in general than your skill in determining the outcome on average. Is this your intent?

You might also consider a hard limit of say three or four on negative traits.

All RPGs are general guidlines that GMs will throw out at will. No need to mention it. I think that your system is open enough to get almost any charcter out of it, and does not need a "break the rules if you feel the need to" clause.

"(potentially another success - or more than one, if you keep rolling 6's)"

I thought that by "roll another die" you meant another swing against the target number. But I see the phrase "added to the number". So how do you get more than one success if you are adding the dice together and caomparing versus a target number. Perhaps I'm being dense here and an example would help.

The other problem is that most tasks could be reduced to zero required successes this way. Anything with less than five required successes, in fact, which is most everything.

Mine accomplishes what you set out to do (make tasks that require more successes than the player has dice possible), but does not have the problems.

Right, but it's not unrealistic or anything either. And since it takes an extra rule to say the penalty stops at four, it's just an unnecessary layer of complexity. The player has to remember when to stop accounting. Instead just drop the rule. An advantge of this is that you can make healing proportional to the wound penalties acquired.

I kinda agree. It makes sense that exhaustion would be recoverable relatively wwuickly. The problem is that by pushing a character can be made to succeed at nearly impossible tasks automatically. And the only thing holding him back is the recovery time. Too easy. But I like the concept in general.

Howsabout instead of automatic successes, you get extra dice? That makes it a gamble. And BTW, these exhaution points should cause penalties, but shouldn't count as part of the four wounds needed to kill. Or perhaps something like one "real" damage per four exhaustion, so players can run themselves into the ground (after pushing a little you'll need to push more just to overcome the pushing penalties). That would simulate long term weariness well, and limit use of pushing. Keep track of the two (wounds and exhaustion) separately for recovery and death purposes.

Might I suggest faithfulness as a bonus to the exhaustion recovery die roll?

I just read the new section on opposed actions, and I still don't get it. What is the target number (for calculating the number of successes)? By Factors, do you mean required and optional successes? The term seems undefined elsewhere.

Fate points seem kinda generic. Might I suggest Faith points instead, or somthing to drive the religious nature of the game. Reward these for adressing moral themes or something. Otherwise they can work the same mechanically and represent the Spirit of the Deity propelling the character on towards victory. Actually. these would make more sense as your "automatic success" mechanic.

"God does not play dice with the universe." - Albert Einstein

Foci advancement: Are we to assume that the numbers on each focus just shift to reflect their use and that the total remains the same? Or do particular ones improve? If the latter you will find folks maxing out quick. If the former, then how does one get a six in a focus if the total can be only four?

Once again, I've updated the site. It was getting a bit long, though, so I broke it up into several pages, and in doing so, moved where it's located. It can now be found at:

http://www.geocities.com/dan_worthington/Professional/MG/mech.html

Btw, would it be better/easier for everyone if I mentioned in posts like this WHAT I've changed? Or is it better to just direct you to the site? (I can see benefits and problems with doing both, and was wondering which was preferable...)

Daniel

Posting them here wouldn't hurt. Here are my thoughts that ~could~ have been covered before by someone else as I skimmed through. Its less about precision than scope.

1.The Three Foci
Explain why you think characters having a developmental focus is important. I'd be interested in seeing how you divided traits between mental and spiritual. How would a trait like "charisma" fit into those three foci? I can think of lots of people IRL who have a "social" focus (actors, models) and what about artists and writers? Intellectual? What if they write for the Man Show? :smile:

I guess what I'm asking for is something that explains how choosing a foci is relevant to concept, as opposed to point distribution.

2. More detail in "bad traits"- I'd love to see examples, and how they interrelate with Foci and (most especially) who has the power to 'invoke' bad traits- the player or the GM. I definately like the term "thorn" over "bad trait" in usage. The imagery that thorns invoke is good.

3. Since this is a Christian-oriented game, I'd be interested in seeing more detail on how morality affects character skill. I think you've got a good start with the "gifts" and "thorns", but what happens to characters that use their 'gifts' in immoral ways or fall to vice? Should the GM award thorns to players who misuse their gifts?

I'll leave it at that for now.

Laurel
External Developer for Skotos Tech
Creator of Devils Cay


[ This Message was edited by: Laurel on 2001-12-28 17:00 ]

1.The Three Foci
Explain why you think characters having a developmental focus is important.

I guess what I'm asking for is something that explains how choosing a foci is relevant to concept, as opposed to point distribution.

I'd be interested in seeing how you divided traits between mental and spiritual. How would a trait like "charisma" fit into those three foci? I can think of lots of people IRL who have a "social" focus (actors, models) and what about artists and writers? Intellectual? What if they write for the Man Show? :smile:

2. More detail in "bad traits"- I'd love to see examples, and how they interrelate with Foci and (most especially) who has the power to 'invoke' bad traits- the player or the GM. I definately like the term "thorn" over "bad trait" in usage. The imagery that thorns invoke is good.

3. Since this is a Christian-oriented game, I'd be interested in seeing more detail on how morality affects character skill. I think you've got a good start with the "gifts" and "thorns", but what happens to characters that use their 'gifts' in immoral ways or fall to vice? Should the GM award thorns to players who misuse their gifts?

Well, it turns out that I didn't have time for the Gifts page I planned on working on. Instead, I streamlined the basic rules portion to make it easier and quicker. (I made the difficulty number static, and changed how Factors and Successes Required work.) I also updated the Character Framework section to reflect Thorns as it's own area in the Framework.

Anyway, the website hasn't changed ( http://www.geocities.com/dan_worthington/Professional/MG/mech.html ), so feel free to go take a look and tell me what you think!

(And sorry about not getting to Gifts from God - I've only got 7 hours till I need to be AT work, and I'd like to get SOME sleep! I'll try to work on it tomorrow evening.) :smile:

Daniel

Well, I solved Healing and Fate Points to my satisfaction (aside from a better name for Fate Points). Course, I just finished it, so I haven't given it a chance to settle in my mind yet... And I still need to work on the Character Advancement page and create a Gifts from God page. Once I've finished all that, I'll get to work on the Setting info. Thanks again to everyone who's given such great advice.

Daniel

The fixed target is much simpler, and eliminates many of the problems that existed. Are we to assume that the Miscellaneous Factor is where you include things for difficulty in the task? If that's in there, I missed it. Or was there some other way of indicating difficulty?

Anyhow, one neat thing about your system is that (like Underworld which is similar) you can use coins. To make up for explosions, for each success, flip again. For every two more consecutive heads you get, you get an additional success. So, for example, I've got five "dice" trying to get six successes. If I get three successes on those five flips, I flip again for the first success, and get a tails, indicating no further successes. For the second I flip again and get three consecutive heads, and then a tails, so I now have one more success (four total, still need two more). For the third success I flip four heads before getting a tails, so I get two more successes, and make my quota.

BTW, this system will give you slightly more succeesses than sixes exploding, but given that you don't always have dice handy, it's a reasonable alternative.

Mike

Ya know, that's a wonderful idea for an Appendix! "Don't have any - or enough - dice? Here's what you do. First, you get a few coins..." Thanks for the idea! It'll probably be a bit before I start working on it (I want to get the core rules and setting information done first), but it's certainly something I'm going to want to put into the final product! Again, thanks!

Daniel