Topic: [Divinity] making the conversion from dice to diceless. ( baby rant)
Started by: sean2099
Started on: 6/20/2006
Board: First Thoughts
On 6/20/2006 at 1:31am, sean2099 wrote:
[Divinity] making the conversion from dice to diceless. ( baby rant)
Hi all,
I have promised some people here that I would keep them abreast of this process for Divinity. Here is one of threads I would like to reference because this thread is a split from it.
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=19899.0
I apologize but I read an article here that stated, more or less, 'You are either playing diceless or a combination of dice/diceless.' That prompted me because I had two different systems for skills without an external opponent and for opposed rolls.
To make a long story short, I removed the dice mechanic. I replaced with a attribute called Will. Will is simply the attribute that measures how many points you the Divinity (god or goddess) has at any given time. I set it with a default score of 10. I have used the number ten in other parts of the game so why not now.
I decided that they would recover one point per scene but that their score could not go over ten. I did so, assuming that once they spend one point...they will spend more than that during each scene. I could be wrong but I figure getting the spend/save hurtle changed to how much to spend was a worthy addition.
Amazingly, getting rid of the dice gave me other ideas. As of right now, I just came up with a "new" mechanic. I call it "clamoring." Every use of power can be heard by other non-mortal beings. I like because each usage of power creates more noise, which is detectable by non-mortals within a certain radius and can give away information about the power user. I had been looking for a mechanic to help "limit" power usage without forcing them via additional resources (the subject of a thread all by itself.)
Changing to diceless has not been completely painless. I have to go back through the power lists and tweak them. I laugh about it now but I had dice-based initative for divine creatures. The Temporal list needs an edit, that's for sure. For most of it, I see that clarity is the main issue. Even as I type, I could start other threads or digress in this one but I'll try not to do that too much. For me, diceless has made and is making some things clearer. I not advocating that diceless is better in all cases but in this case, I think it fits better.
I don't know about informative this was to everybody but it has helped me at least.
Sean
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Topic 19899