The FooFoo Factor is my pet name for measuring how "heroic" a game's system is. I'm primarily talking about the damage system, but rules for things like fear, pain, and knockback count as well.

Low end foofoo being gritty violence (normal people freeze or run when faced with violence, and getting shot once kills you good and dead). High end foofoo being superheroic action movie stuff (the hero can walk through uzi fire, and survive a fall out of the 30th story by cushioning his fall with a minivan).

My question is:
What game systems, or components thereof, use some sort of adjustable sliding scale for how heroic the system is?

I realize this is sort of a general question. I'm just interested in looking at any ground work that might have been done, or any interesting ideas anyone might have.

All I can think of is Fuzion's 'AutoFire Ratio' (Reader's Digest version: The number of bullets that actually hit you on a succesful autofire attack is equal to the number of rounds fired divided by the AutoFire Ratio of the campaign).

Cruciel


Hey, DC Heroes of like 2nd and 3rd edition had a nice set of Foo Foo factor Dials they called "Genre Rules". The major things they set where what types of weapons caused "Killing damage" automatically, versus the player having to declare it. in the game damage could be killing or standard, where standard couldn't kill you. Other considerations where How much you could push your abilities using Hero Points. Oh, and whether or not entering killing combat caused you to lose RP rewards. (Since most DC comics had a nice 4-color view of killing.) There were a couple of other details which i forget as well.

2nd edition shadowrun had a combat damage dial which let you change how lethal damage was. Hero system has a number of switches which move the combat from comic book SH to grittier and less forgiving. These were mostly optional rules for bleeding, wound penalties, you know the stuff that makes getting in a fight no fun in the real world. There were several other rules switches in Hero system that seperated Heroic/Superheroic reality. Though, by the nature of the system it never quite got down to gritty. These switches mostly involved power level, and the types of accounting for real world concerns you had to do.

DC Heroes is what I ripped off for setting up the 'Reality Rules" in my TMW:COTEC rules. There are several dials in the system for damage capacities, the HP cost of bonus dice on rolls, the limits to the number of bonus dice, etc. Plus a few ideas inspired from Hero system as well.

I think Fantasy Hero had something like this when they talked about campaign design types (High Fantasy, etc.). I don't now recall whether they went into concrete detail about how to shift around the FooFoo factor, apart from the number of points a given character could have, and the number of points any one power could cost.

Jovian Chronicles Silhoette system has 3 settings to control the "cinematic realism" or something to that effect. Its a selection you make at game setup.

Unsurprisingly GURPS has a number of rules which allow you to alter the foo-foo factor. Points values for characters and the various cinematic combat rules are the most obvious ports of call.

Rob,

My original thinking was that if you wanted a single mechanic for a FooFoo factor dial it'd need to be low level - at the core of the damage/combat system. Example: Heal 1 Health per day equal to FooFoo Factor.

DC heroes makes me think it can all be accomplished at a high level, by simply using a well designed token system. Scale the game down to gritty, use the tokens to invalidate things, and allow the cinematic-worth/refresh-rate of the tokens to be adjustable as the FooFoo Factor. Example: Health 1 Health per day. Low: 1 token heals 0 Health per day, High: 1 token heals all Health in one day.

I didn't see the Reality Rules in the TMW:COTEC posts...is this big secret work in development or did I miss it?

Barring any brillant insight I'll probably work off the token approach (if I can figure out how to work in knockback).


Contracycle,

I couldn't find too much about the Jovian Chronicles rules (don't have the book either) other than they were called the 'Reality Distortion Level' and had something to do with ammunition, armor penetration, dice rolling, script immunity, and existential angst. Can you give me the skinny?


Chris & Ian

Thx. I don't have any comments...but I thought you deserved your names in bold letters too.

We've been trying to do something like this with the Epic Index in Scattershot. In order to simplify the overall 'rules structures,' the Critical Threshold is hooked directly to it (the sum must be less than or equal to 10 and chosen prior to play - if not written into the supplement - thus if the Epic Index is 4, the Critical Threshold cannot be over 6). This lets the Mechanix adapt to the 'cinematic feel' of the Genre Expectation at hand.

It hasn't really been that intensely playtested yet.

Fang Langford

Hello,

I think that before this topic can really be discussed, its underlying assumption needs review.

That assumption is that a game can have a chassis or foundation of "realistic" mechanics in the first place. Given that assumption, then one might imagine a set of game mechanics that could add onto or otherwise expand the "bounds of realism," which is to say, unrealistic or Foo Foo.

But I don't think that assumption holds. I think that game design operates on a much different chassis, or specifically, a much different range of them. And furthermore, that efforts to make a game "realistic" represent a modification of its existing chassis, not a stripping-away.

One example is the famous Hero System, especially its later versions as found in Champions 4th edition and the Fuzion crossover, Champions Millenium. These games offer excellent examples, probably the premiere published examples, of the "dials of realism vs. Foo Foo" that you're asking about. If you're not familiar with them, then I'd say, there ya go, question answered, and the topic would be done.

However, what is the chassis that the Foo Foo is built onto, in these games? It is a system of point-balance: a set of default attribute scores, a set of free points to add onto that as you see fit, and finally a further set of points which are "paid for" with disadvantage points.

What, bluntly, is realistic about that? Equally bluntly, the answer is "nothing." It's a system to ensure that characters are equipped with a certain profile of customizable abilities and disadvantages, situating them into the desired "genre" of play. The available "settings" are all pretty much the same, being fast-action modernist adventure stories, varying only in lethality and the scale of damage one might cause.

In other words, I think that making a point-blank bullet wound capable of killing a character is an addition to an existing set of agreements about "what play is about," not a fundamental feature of the game design.

And I also anticipate this post will be widely misunderstood, so I'm bracing myself for the onslaught ...

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: [The] assumption is that a game can have a chassis or foundation of "realistic" mechanics in the first place.

Ron Edwards wrote: Given that assumption, then one might imagine a set of game mechanics that could add onto or otherwise expand the "bounds of realism," which is to say, unrealistic or Foo Foo.

But I don't think that assumption holds. I think that game design operates on a much different chassis, or specifically, a much different range of them.

Ron Edwards wrote: And furthermore, [those] efforts to make a game 'realistic' represent a modification of its existing chassis, not a stripping-away.

...In other words, I think that making a point-blank bullet wound capable of killing a character is an addition to an existing set of agreements about 'what play is about,' not a fundamental feature of the game design.

cruciel wrote: Rob,

My original thinking was that if you wanted a single mechanic for a FooFoo factor dial it'd need to be low level - at the core of the damage/combat system. Example: Heal 1 Health per day equal to FooFoo Factor.

DC heroes makes me think it can all be accomplished at a high level, by simply using a well designed token system. Scale the game down to gritty, use the tokens to invalidate things, and allow the cinematic-worth/refresh-rate of the tokens to be adjustable as the FooFoo Factor. Example: Health 1 Health per day. Low: 1 token heals 0 Health per day, High: 1 token heals all Health in one day.

I didn't see the Reality Rules in the TMW:COTEC posts...is this big secret work in development or did I miss it?

Barring any brillant insight I'll probably work off the token approach (if I can figure out how to work in knockback).

cruciel wrote:
I couldn't find too much about the Jovian Chronicles rules (don't have the book either) other than they were called the 'Reality Distortion Level' and had something to do with ammunition, armor penetration, dice rolling, script immunity, and existential angst. Can you give me the skinny?

cruciel wrote: My question is:
What game systems, or components thereof, use some sort of adjustable sliding scale for how heroic the system is?

Ron Edwards wrote: What, bluntly, is realistic about that? Equally bluntly, the answer is "nothing."
Best,
Ron

Hi there,

Fang wrote,

I wonder if the reverse of the assumption might be true; can a game have a chassis that the players 'restrict' to function to their satisfaction of 'realistic?' I think that's what I attempt with Scattershot; it's a somewhat 'looser' set of rules that explicitly asks the consumer to interpret them along lines suiting their interests (including, in some cases, 'realistic'). But will that work?

Ron, here cometh the onslaught.

I was actually hoping to dodge the whole realistic/unrealistic debate. I really don't care too much whether gritty is realistic or not. In play, it's just about feel and tone. Mechanically, it's mostly just about the lethality of injury and the potency of fear and pain. Don't worry about derailing this thread, it's a boat.

In my mind, the Foo Foo factor is one of the details that really lock a game into a genre. In my opinion the 'realism settings' and 'metaphysical assumptions' are two biggies that prevent a game system from making the jump from Generic (genre light) to Universal (genre flexible). I'm not saying I'm try to make a Universal game, so please don't throw little wooden shoes at me. I'm just looking at the possibility making the heroic-ness of a game customizable, real simple like.

The traditional approach (in actual play and most game texts I'm familiar with) to setting the Foo Foo factor has just been to adjust character point totals and pick and choose which rules to use.

The point total approach is unappealing to me. You may find yourself wanting to keep the same characters, but move them back and forth between different level's of Foo Foo. Maybe you cycle GMs and the current GM has a different Foo Foo preference. Maybe your characters live inside the television, and when the channel changes from Hill Street Blues to Astroboy the Foo Foo factor changes with it.

Rules hack & slash + rules mods (use bleeding damage? think up rules for suffocation? etc), means keeping track of a bunch of little rules. Which I'm OK with doing, it just doesn't seem very elegant to me and it's kind of cumbersome to keep track of.

A few dials like in Rob's most helpful post (Jason's Forge posts, featuring the new bold letter rewards system ;) ), or a single index like Fang mentions for Scattershot seems, a lot easier to manage. (The whole mass of Scattershot threads are printed, and waiting on my coffee table for me to get to them).

I'm completely missing the Step One / Step Two thing. I don't see the distinction between deciding which rules to use in Step One and deciding which rules to use in Step Two. Maybe the difference between deciding on a 'genre' and deciding how to interpret the 'genre' you've selected? If that's the case, then that just leads down the 'what's a genre and where does it end debate?'.

Hi there,

Tell ya what, let's bag the whole One/Two point; it was very abstract. I think the only solid thing I can contribute goes like this:

1) Many games exist that permit play's "grittiness/Foo Foo" dial to be spun as the group/GM desires. The Hero System is probably the king but there are lots more.

2) All of the ones that I'm familiar with utilize a point-allocation character creation system, and a lot of the dial-spinning involves how many points can be spent on what aspects of the characters (e.g. bullet-proof defenses, degree of permitted severity of attacks, etc).

3) If you're looking for a method that is not based on point-allocation, then I think you're entering some great and fascinating unknown territory, which will probably be worthwhile to everyone. Fang has ventured there by using points, but not limiting points, for instance.

That's about it, I guess. Make sure and send insights from the journey.

Best,
Ron

The 'foo-foo' level of the 1st editions star wars game was spectacularly high. There was actually a statistically measureable probability of surviving the detonation of an entire planet! We calculated that some tens of millions of surviving souls were left floating around in space after the planet Alderaan was shot out from beneath their feet by the Death Star....

But the neat thing about the game was that the foo-foo level was easily modified because all the damage was routed through a single multipliter chart. Modify that one chart and the game could be made extremely deadly or as sanitized as a GI Joe battlefield by changing a handful of numbers.

I'm wondering if you can also have a high Foo Foo game that does not tweak the damage rules, but rather the chance of being hit/targeted. With this type of Foo Foo the PCs will be less likely to die because the nobodies around them will be getting killed instead. They don’t have more hit points, but rather a better relationship with lady luck. The result is a game with the same mortality rate with different rules for luck. Is this another take on Foo Foo, or am I missing your point?

Hi Fletcher,

The NPC system in Hong Kong Action Theater does this. The thugs might be able to run faster, shoot better, and generally have "higher DEX" than the portly, aged crime boss who's Behind It All, but the portly crime boss is much harder to hit. The difficulty of hitting a character is directly proportional to his or her "plot importance," absolutely regardless of the character's in-game physical abilities.

Oh yes, and one of the other neat Foo Foos in that game is that explosions do no damage to the main characters. At all.

Best,
Ron

P.S. At the outset of the thread, I was thinking that Foo Foo was going to be a relatively not-useful term (due to its possible associations with "realism" which definitely is problematic), but you know? I'm thinkin' that it's bucking for Forge Jargon status, big-time.

Actually, that's a pretty standard response, Fletcher. In many games you just bump up the power level of characters vis a vis their opponents, and that does the trick. Dodge scores. Etc.

The Riddle of Steel (TROS), does an interesting thing in that it gives the player extra dice to survive combat as long as he's addressing some issue that he cares about. This means that normally the character is pretty realistically vulnerable, but becomes "hard to hit" when he's fighting for something he cares about. Reinforces dramatic situations.

All one would have to do to make TROS really "high foo-foo" would be to allow Spiritual Attributes to go higher than they do, and to have more given out.

Mike

I think it's a mistake to limit this concept only to adverse consequences of combat. How about adverse consequences in general?

If I'm imprisoned, will I be able to escape? If I'm framed, will I be able to clear my name? If I'm cursed, will I be able to lift the curse? If I pass through a dimensional portal, will I be able to find my way back? If my true love leaves me, will I be able to convince her to return to me? If I've lost the heavyweight title, will I be able to win it back? If I drop the floppy disk containing the only known copy of the plague cure formula into a lava pool, will I be able to find another copy? If I'm disgraced at court, will I be able to return to favor? If my pop sound has gone out of style, will I be able to return to the charts? If an orc takes away the One Ring, will I be able to get it back?

I don't see any fundamental difference between those questions and, "If I take a bullet, will I be able to recover?" Yet usually only the latter is expected to be addressed by an RPG's core system. And I gotta wonder why.

I think the real question at hand for combat "foo-foo" is, "Can I die in a meaningless shooting?" (High foo-foo answer is "no" or "almost certainly not;" low foo-foo answer is "yes" or "yes, if you're unlucky.") And that's a question of outcome expectations. Cause and effect rules are invariably poor at establishing answers to questions of outcome expectations, though when combat is concerned that's not readily apparent for some reason.

- Walt

If we go with Walt's idea of Foo-Foo factor(the triple "F"?) being more than simply damage and combat, would it make sense to define it as rules or mechanics that favor protagonists and antagonists over other characters? (or, likewise, give other characters less of a chance?)

Chris

Seventh Sea has at least three kinds of foo-foo. The first rates characters as brutes, henchmen or Heroes/Villains. This affects how easy a character is to put down, brutes go down like nine-pins, Villains take quite a bit of effort. Additionally, player character mortality (as opposed to being knocked-out) doesn't exist within the domain of the fortune mechanic - PCs only die as the result of a player-initiated drama mechanic (actually, Brutes only die or not in combat as a result of player choice - players can always opt to just knock them out).

Secondly players have a store of drama dice that can be used to affect the outcome of a roll - they boost rolls, effectively. This goes to Walt's question about non-combat foo-foos. They get used in combat, sure, but they can also be used to pick locks, persuade magistrates or woo women.

Thirdly, there is an optional rule: Karma dice. These exist as a pool for the entire player group, and cannot be used to affect a player's own character. They affectively allow a player to make a fiat "you succeed" for another character (or a "you fail" for a villain). Again these can be used in or out of combat. I like these a lot in terms of ensuring player character protagonism, but I wouldn't recommend them to any GMs who care much for their own plots or NPCs.

Chris,

I think you're onto something. While there has been a lot of discussion about the Foo Foo Factor in relation to combat [to the extent that 3F seems to have be an actual mathematical entity with relevance to damage scaling and mechanics], I think suggesting that 3F is some measure of the gap between protagonists, antagonists, and, um, mooks, is a good one.

What I've been wondering about is fear, to be honest. I mean, you've got to wonder where the FFF Dial is when the heroes don't run away, and the monsters don't run away either.

Perhaps we could link the Foo Foo Factor to the, um, deadliness of the rest of the world? Though that's a little combat specific, which I, personally, am eager to avoid.

What I'm trying to say is that when 3F is high for a particular character they've got no reason to back down from a fight, no reason to be afraid of a bullet, and they're unlikely to be cut down without it meaning something. When 3F is low, they'll run if confronted, perish if attacked, and are effectively disposable to the action.

I'm now wondering if 3F can mean Foo Foo Factor and Fear, Fatality, Focus. I think I'm on the verge of digressing, so I'll stop.

- drew

Rather than saying that mooks and protagonists have some particular relationship or gap between them (resistance to damage, accuracy of shooting, fearlessness, likelihood of benefiting from luck or coincidence, or whatever), I prefer to imagine the distinction as mooks and protagonists having a different relationship with "fate" -- that is to say, with the metagame. Two of the three mechanisms that Ian cites for Seventh Sea are obviously metagame, and I think the other (damage resistance and immunity from mortal surprises) makes the most sense interpreted as purely metagame as well.

This is something I've said before in Fang's Genre Expectations discussion: that reliably meeting outcome expectations requires metagame causality; in-game-world causality won't do it.

Which raises serious questions about the generality of the "absence of the metagame" as characteristic of (especially) high-concept Simulationist play, where outcome expectations can become a major motivator in play.

Metagame causality doesn't necessarily require overt metagame mechanisms; it can also be achieved via contract with the GM. In the vast majority of games it's completely within a GM's power to reliably assure that if a character jumps through a dimensional gateway, he able to find his way back home, or that if an orc gets hold of the Ring of Power, the protagonists will be able to get it back again. (That's not to suggest that all GMs actually exercise such power.) Again, it seems a little out of kilter that the conventions of (especially) Simulationist play require that it be beyond the GM's power to assure that if a player-character enters a combat, he will survive. Yet that's the way it's usually, at least in theory, supposed to work.

Overt metagame mechanics are a more attractive option for discussion, for a variety of reasons -- but there, the same comparison can be made in reverse. If there's a mechanism that a player can use to guarantee that a character will survive a fight (that is, maintain an element of the status quo) unless the player wants the option for the character to die (that is, experience a dramatic change or resolution), it should also be usable to make sure that when Indiana Jones loses the Ark he can get it back (maintain the status quo) unless the player wants the loss to be permanent (a possible dramatic change or resolution). An in-game-world causal rule that just allows the Ark to be designated as un-take-away-able is clearly a poor substitute, just as "this character will survive because he's invulnerable to damage" is a poor substutute for "this character will survive because the player (or GM) has a measure of control over his fate."

Hence, Drew, I'd suggest that the effect of the FFF dial should be to give some metagame agency (most likely the player) increased control over the effects of the character's fear, rather than making the fear itself go away.

The same turn of the dial could work against the protagonist too, when the genre expectations suggest it. For example, in some high-FFF situations a villain should be able to knock a protagonist unconscious at will (by drugs or a blow to the head) as long as it's by surprise.

- Walt

Walt, I think I was confusing myself by applying the 3F dial to characters, and not the game, though, looking at it, I'm not so sure that that approach is a bad thing. I also think I'm missing something, because the first time I read what you've written I replaced 'metagame' with 'system'.

Until now, I'd been reading the Foo Foo Factor as having some relationship as to how likely a character was to remain intact, and having read what you've just written I'm now thinking about it as having the character remain unaffected by what's going on around them, and I'm not sure that that's what's being discussed.

You mentioned control over the effects of things, fear being the obvious example, and I'm not sure how that dovetails with the idea that, when the Foo Foo Factor is high, characters can walk through hails of bullets.

Perhaps I'm just struggling with the idea that the control you're talking about is expressed [in the examples we're discussing, anyway] when the gun is fired. If the Foo Foo Factor is low, then the gun being fired is significant, and if it's high, it isn't? At a basic survival level? Does that make sense?

Let me restate my assumptions:

Initially, I thought the Foo Foo Factor was a measure of how likely a character was to survive something.

What Walt said has led me to consider that it's a measure of the character remaining intact.

Does that distinction make sense? I suppose you could call it the difference between someone walking into a gunfight knowing that they're bulletproof, and someone walking into a gunfight knowing that they've got story immunity.

Are these different things? Or is this gap what Ron was talking about when he mentioned 3F as a candidate for inclusion in the Grand Unified Theory?

Help! Anyone! Please!

- drew

erithromycin wrote: Initially, I thought the Foo Foo Factor was a measure of how likely a character was to survive something.

What Walt said has led me to consider that it's a measure of the character remaining intact.

Does that distinction make sense? I suppose you could call it the difference between someone walking into a gunfight knowing that they're bulletproof, and someone walking into a gunfight knowing that they've got story immunity.

Are these different things? Or is this gap what Ron was talking about when he mentioned 3F as a candidate for inclusion in the Grand Unified Theory?