Hello, it is my first mail , writing from Turkey.

I am planning a system that uses 3 d6 .

Everyone on the table including GM throws three dices at the same time.
Everyone chooses one dice as initative, one for defence and one dice for attack.

In social situations, one dice for Manipulation ( Attack ), one dice for Self confidence (defence), one for Inititive.

On other occasions like using a rope, spotting whatever , i need to find a way for dice spending.How can i handle it ?

I use a system with 16 attributes . On each attribute you give several points, and like gumshoe system you are spending points in a situation.

Lets say char A is hitting with bare hands to char B. i have dices 5,4,3 , A chooses 4 for initiative, 5 for attack and 3 for defence.

He spends this round 2 points from Speed attribute to add his initiative to make it 6. He wants to spend two points from his brawl rating to make it 7.

Meanwhile B chooses 5 as the defence roll , and by spending dex points of 3 points, he eliminates this attack. Now it is his turn to attack with a lower dice of 3.

For each other character ( if it is a multi character situation ) defence rolls lower by one.

So with the coming dices , each player must decide which one is essential for him.

This is a game in modern life and players are gifted people with inherited superpowers who struggles in a dark world that devils lurk outside by expanding sins all over the world.

What is your idea about system ?

And can you give me any clue regarding how can i handle other situations like climbing a tree, opening lock what ever. ?

thanks in advance.

Stick with the basic idea you've got: one die is initiative (speed of action), one die is effectiveness (how good a result), one die is "defense" (vulnerability to counter-action).

Spotting: compare effectiveness die to stealth/concealment rating of things to be spotted; defense is "exposure"--whether you're visible to anyone looking for you, or your behavior is likely to attract notice/be remembered.

Picking locks: compare effectiveness to difficulty of lock; defense is "telltales"--how many clues you've left behind that might lead investigators to you.

. . . and so forth. "Initiative" becomes important when time is critical; "Defense" becomes important when there's opposition that may react to your action; "Effectiveness" becomes important when the task at hand is hard. In many circumstances, only one thing is important, but that's okay--those decisions are easy. When the situation gets complicated, players will like being able to spend their points to shore up weak rolls.

Hi,

Taking it that the GM can assign a badguy/monster/opponent of pretty much whatever strength, I'm inclined to think that makes the interelations of those dice fairly irrelevant. You can't creatively push back against the GM's prefered creative vision with your resources as minute resources Vs infinite resources has no uncertain game to it. It ends up like busy work to keep the player occupied/distracted while the GM tells his own story. Which might be what your shooting for, but you seem pretty serious about it - if that's what your shooting for, all you need is a distraction/some busy work. The interelations of the dice don't actually need to be significant.

Hey Amanchanamun,

How's Turkey? Florida sucks. :)

I think Bill is on the right track, but I have a question - does the person rolling the dice have to specify what each die is for before rolling, or can they decide after the results are showing? If they have to choose beforehand, it would open up the idea that the roller can designate more than one die toward a particular task. Consider this, when in combat, you're splitting your attention between the three activities, trying to attack someone (effectiveness), trying not to get hit (resistance), and trying to do this all before everyone else (speed), so your splitting your die rolls three ways. What if you chose to give up speed to have a better chance at hitting your target? In that case, you might roll two dice for the attack, one die for defense, and take a default result of 1 for your initiative.

So how about with non-combat situations? When in a not combat situation, you can concentrate better, so you can designate more dice towards your effectiveness and simply choose the higher roll. Example situation of picking a lock - If I had all the time in the world, and nothing external actively trying to stop me, I could concentrate all my effort into getting the job done. In game terms, I could take the lowest possible result on resistance and speed, and instead roll three dice for effectiveness. Make sense? What do you think? Just throwing that out there.

Callan, I'm curious as to why this as a conflict resolution system would be irrelevent? Is it because it lacks the power for the player to take away the GM's control of the story?

Zachary, I should note I'm not singling this out. Alot of games use some 'GM can choose whatever resource he wants'. Probably if you could make up an example of a conflict resolution system which is irrelevant and describe it, I could draw parralels between the two. Your probably thinking of how it's relevant - indeed you may only be thinking of how it is relevant. It may be illuminating to try and think of an example, if only hypothetical, of a conflict resolution system that is irrelevant. Once you do think of one that is irrelevant...

I'm not quite sure I follow Callan. You mentioned that you felt the system detailed above was busy work for the player while the GM tells his story. Sounds to me like your suggesting that since the mechanic does not provide a method for the player to take control of the story away from the GM, that the mechanic is uneccesary. Is that correct? Just trying to understand what your getting at, thats all :)

I'm not trying to speak for Callan here, but I think I see what he's saying. Since the GM has creative control on what NPCs/monsters/whatever have in terms of attributes and skills, it will probably wind up being essentially impossible for a player's roll to beat the GM's. That is, if the GM wants a monster who can't be punched out, then the monster won't be punched out. If that's the style of game desired, then why bother making a roll system?

As far as the OP goes, I think that the system as stated is fine with a small criticism. If I can add any skill, attribute or trait to my dice to enhance the roll, certain players will obtain very high-end scores to these elements to avoid the majority of failures based on bad rolls. This makes character-balance very important. Without any information presented on character creation or advancement, I cannot say whether or not you have a problem with your proposed system. I would strongly recommend placing strict limitations on the attribute scores of your players to prevent breaking the game.

16 attributes is a lot.  Why so many?

Zach, the best way to start getting what I'm saying is to come up with that irrelevant conflict resolution example. :)

Badger, that's a blunt yet valid execution of the 'GM decides his resources utterly' rules. The usual gamer wisdom is that "If you do that, you wont have any players", which actually ignores the issue that, as is, the GM has absolute control whether he likes it or not. When forced into absolute power, the only option he has is to to foster the illusion he isn't in absolute power.

I guess I just don't see how the mechanics as outlined in the original post suggest that the GM has infinite power.

I mean, I get what your worried about. Say the GM doesn't want the player to get into the room, and target numbers are decided by him, so why not make the target number impossibly high so the player can never actually pick the lock? That sounds like busy work to me. Give the player something to roll, even though it's already been decided that he'll fail.

But, could the same mechanics not be used in better form? Say the GM doesn't really want the player to get into the room, but he uses good GMing practices, and concedes that if the player succeeds at a skill roll with a fairly challenging target number, the player does indeed get into the room and it's time for the GM to come up with something interesting to put in there. Could the same mechanics not work well for that situation?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is nothing inherently irrelevent about the rules when used in conjuction with good GMing.

Hello,

I am in Bursa - Turkey, and here sucks as Florida do. We have rain that never ends.

I have 16 attributes , because in the game there is no skills. But there are specialities and aspects like in FAITH.

For instance,

I have attention attribute . It helps you to notice things, carrying out right when following and give extra chance when aiming.

And if you add FINDING THINGS aspect, there is no need at all for skills.

Yes, there is a chance that players can use high points to handle situations for once. I am trying to find a solution for that. Best idea i found yet is to give a limitation for using points 1/3 of the total .

If someones' Brawl is 9, he can use 3 at max in one turn.

From a design perspective, skills and attributes are fundamentally the same mechanism: character capacity.  Once you realize that, then you also realize the wisdom of only having one or the other.  In your game, you just have attributes.  In my game, you just have skills!  Therefore, I completely understand your rationale behind attributes - thank you for elaborating on that.

Thank you. I share the same thoughts.

About making decisions of spending points before or after throwing dices  is a concern for me as well.

It looks better for me to decide after rolling. But in this case fumbling on something is getting difficult. For instance if a character gets 1,2,2 as a result. He can choose 1 as initiative and improve it still.

Zachary,

Say the GM doesn't really want the player to get into the room, but he uses good GMing practices, and concedes that if the player succeeds at a skill roll with a fairly challenging target number...

I examined the sentences again. As i understand,

There must be some clarified difficulty classes for the hurdle.

Like..
opening standart door 3
chest locks 4
safes 5
... safes 7