We've already discussed the idea of "dominance", that after the dice are rolled, the highest die type is considered dominant, and it colors the outcome. If it's Force, the action is forceful, and so on. The effect of this can be limited entirely to color and description, but today we're going to kick around a few ways to give it some mechanical punch.
The most obvious solution, of course, is to simply have some sort of triggered effect based on the dominant die. If Force dominates, it might mean extra damage and such. This is a bit system specific - damage and armor penetration bonuses don't make sense for all systems - but the idea is pretty generally applicable. Fred also floated an interesting idea of looking at the ties as meaningful as well. That is to say, if Force and Finesse both dominate, that is akin to a critical success, using both outcomes, and if all three dice match, that's Super Effective (cuz all the cool kids love Pokemon terminology).
This does raise an interesting question of how dominance plays out in the case of a failure. Presumably, bonuses would only apply on a success, and dominance is now more about how you failed. Three 1s would really indicate that everything imaginable went wrong.
Another possibility is to use dominance as the trigger for player abilities. To use martial arts as an example, a character might be able to do a "whirlwind strike" only if the hit with finesse dominant. Or perhaps the power itself is written so that it has different effects based on what factor is dominant. That certainly opens up a broad range of possibilities, especially because every power need not have a special effect for every outcome.
This sort of mechanic gets very interesting when you start combining it with some of the tricks we were discussing yesterday. By shifting around bonuses, die sizes or die numbers, you can increase the tendency towards certain dominance outcomes, which in turn would let you get the feel for a specific martial art.
To give an example, imagine if we used a system of stances - pre-set dice combinations that come to 18 faces - that can be learned as skills. The "balanced" stance is 3d6, but the Resplendent Wing school stance is Force d4, Fortune d4 and Finesse d10. If you take that stance, you'd want to use attacks which do cool things when finesse dominates.
Of course, since it's martial arts you'd want some interplay. One other thing you can do with Dominance is a little rock-paper-scissors. Force beats Fortune beats Finesse beats Force (or whatever sequence appeals) - if two players both roll, the stronger dominance may grant some moderate to strong advantage, so the benefits of your stance's focus could also be a weakness.[1]
In the less abstract realm, you could set secondary target numbers for the dominant die to restrict triggering effects. If something only happens when the dominant die is Force and it's over 4, then that calls for a bit more bookkeeping, but it also keeps the special results feeling a little bit more earned. This also introduces an interesting corollary to the question of dominance in a failure: if the secondary effect's threshold is still met, then perhaps it still happens.
And once you open that door, you also point to the realm of possibilities beyond dominance. Looking at the other dice also tells a story (If Finesse dominated, Fortune was almost as high, but Force was very low, that suggests a different sort of explanation than one where Force is high and Fortune is low) and you could even have other triggers in the roll for the non-dominant dice. To use and example of a race, suppose that even if you lose (fail the overall roll), you at least show so long as Finesse is above 3. A great number of factors could be determined by a single throw of the dice.
That said, this definitely suggests some synchronicity with the rules for weighting your pool. If the pool is balanced (a straight 3d6) then you're really just depending on luck for these secondary goals. If it's weighted (such as with bonuses, differing die sizes, or roll & keep) then you can steer the result towards different outcomes. This gets all the more interesting when it becomes a genuine choice. Suppose there's something good for each potential focus. Do you tilt towards one to risk the others?
I dig that kind of meaningful tactical choice, but it also reveals a danger - choices like that can really bog things down as the player sits and calculates his optimal action set, waffling between possibilities. Unless you like that, it means you need to make the choices either very simple, or have them already be made (in the case of choosing stats).
This is the real curse of any zero-sum system. Players want to cover their bases as best they can, and will optimize for that, but if things are truly zero sum (or at least look that way) it can be paralyzing. The upside of this is that it can be fuel for a group dynamic. Few things make a group tick better than knowing your buddy is good at the thing you're weak at, at east so long as you're both in play. But that's the tip of a very big iceberg.
Anyway, I don't think I've milked it all yet, but that's a good start, and I'm tired, so let's let that percolate.
1 - If I was really going to use this model for martial arts (and I think it could do it quite well) I admit I'd be inclined to swap over to a 5d6 model and go for elemental dominance.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
FFF: Before the Roll
Another post about a hypothetical resolution system of 3d6 (maybe +bonus) vs target number, with rich dice (dice that convey extra information). The dice respectively represent force, finesse and fortune.
As I was writing this, I refined the idea of the fork a little bit, and realized the more practical division, for discussion purposes, is between things that happen before the dice roll and things that happen afterward. This is the split between things which impact the outcome (fixed things like stats, or dynamic choices like tactics) and different ways the outcome is expressed (much more system specific, but generally breaks down to choices made after the roll, like how damage is distributed).[1] Today I'll look at some options for how to manipulate the system before the roll.
We can have modifiers that exists before the roll, based on the type of die (I need a cooler name for the die categories, to better discuss this idea generally). Presumably this calls for very small values, otherwise they kind of overwhelm the dice. Suppose, for example, that you have stats that correspond to the dice, say Force: 2, Finesse 3, Fortune 1. While you could just total them up and use that as base modifier, that's pretty uninteresting. If, on the other hand, you choose one of them before you roll the dice, that gets interesting. Sure, if all else is equal, you'll just pick your highest value, but that gets complicated when your best is not appropriate to the challenge on hand. Since the bonus not only improves the total roll, but it also increases the likelihood that that die will dominate. If you're running a race, using your force bonus (and thus making force dominate) might well make you lose to someone who has finesse dominate.
That also hints at the reasonthe bonuses need to stay low: bonuses over 3 are going to make it very hard for that die to NOT dominate.
An interesting twist on this is to change die size. One of the joys of dealing with dice from d4 to d12 is that each bump in die size is basically equivalent to adding a +1 (modulo some fiddliness with range). The bonuses could just as easily be handled as die bumps: Instead of rolling 3d6 all the time, maybe I'm Fortune d4, Force d8 and Finesse d6. On the upside, this is kind of neat, especially if the dice can be shifted around dynamically[2] - it's got a very organic feel without adding math. The downside is that I've just complicated my life.
One of the big benefits of 3d6 is that it is demonstrably easy to learn by rote. D&D exposure means a lot of us can roll up stats in our sleep[3], and it's still pretty easy for those who haven't. Mixing up die sizes turns it into an actual mathematical exercise, removing some of the benefits of going to a dice model. It also increases the number of supplies needed. This is not a huge factor, but it's nice to know you have all the necessary dice needs covered with a handful of D6s rather than a bag full of D-everythings.
But for all that logic, I still really just dig the idea of trading dice values, especially on the fly. It triggers that gambling part of the brain I guess. That's a good reason to keep this one in mind - sometimes unreasonable fun can point to the right choice when mere logic fails.
One other option is to mess with the dice pool directly. The player could choose which 3 dice he rolled (3 fortune, two force and a finesse and so on). There's a little play there, but there are probably not enough choices to be interesting. But suppose we add more dice: make it a roll of multiple dice, perhaps 1 per "point" of the stat, then tally the best 3.[4] Basically it's a roll and keep model, but the number of kept dice is fixed at 3. Since the best 3 dice might be of any category, you are more likely to dominate with your high stat, but not guaranteed.
There's definitely some added complexity there - sorting dice is a mental process, much as adding them is, but it's not an overly complicated one, and at least it means you can stick to d6s. It may seem a trivial thing, but if you can only have 1 die type, the fact that d6s pack so compactly that you can buy them in bricks is a pretty big deal.
Now, for the most part I've been focusing on the dice and not giving much thought to the modifier to the roll. This is intentional because, to be frank, that's the easy bit. A skill list (pre-defined or user defined) plus an anticipated numeric range is all you need. Not to say there aren't mechanically interesting things you can do in that space, but rather that it's a very familiar space, and one that would be a whole other topic on its own.
Anyway, that seems like a good start for things we might do before the dice hit the table. Tomorrow, let's start looking at the different ways we can read them and what we can do with that information.
1 - As I was thinking of examples, I realized there are very few systems that call for post-roll choices normally, but it's fairly common in subsystems like specific powers. For example, if you have a power in 4e that lets you move the target, that's a post-success decision to make.
2 - For example, imagine a default 3d6 system. If I need to focus on finesse, I can bump my Force or Fortune die down to a d4, and my finesse up to a d8. If I really focus, I drop both Force and Fortune to d4s, and bump Finesse to a d10. I probably have some other mechanical control to determine how far I can focus any one particular die.
3 - This is, by the way, why I think the easiest way to do something like fudge dice is 3d6, use D&D stat modifiers. It's totally illogical, but if you've played enough 3rd ed, it's second nature to read the dice and convert it into a bonus or penalty.
4 - It would also be possible to roll X, tally the 3 of your choice. This gives the player control over what factor dominates, provided he's willing to choose a non-optimal roll. I'll probably come back to this one when we get to post-roll mechanics.
As I was writing this, I refined the idea of the fork a little bit, and realized the more practical division, for discussion purposes, is between things that happen before the dice roll and things that happen afterward. This is the split between things which impact the outcome (fixed things like stats, or dynamic choices like tactics) and different ways the outcome is expressed (much more system specific, but generally breaks down to choices made after the roll, like how damage is distributed).[1] Today I'll look at some options for how to manipulate the system before the roll.
We can have modifiers that exists before the roll, based on the type of die (I need a cooler name for the die categories, to better discuss this idea generally). Presumably this calls for very small values, otherwise they kind of overwhelm the dice. Suppose, for example, that you have stats that correspond to the dice, say Force: 2, Finesse 3, Fortune 1. While you could just total them up and use that as base modifier, that's pretty uninteresting. If, on the other hand, you choose one of them before you roll the dice, that gets interesting. Sure, if all else is equal, you'll just pick your highest value, but that gets complicated when your best is not appropriate to the challenge on hand. Since the bonus not only improves the total roll, but it also increases the likelihood that that die will dominate. If you're running a race, using your force bonus (and thus making force dominate) might well make you lose to someone who has finesse dominate.
That also hints at the reasonthe bonuses need to stay low: bonuses over 3 are going to make it very hard for that die to NOT dominate.
An interesting twist on this is to change die size. One of the joys of dealing with dice from d4 to d12 is that each bump in die size is basically equivalent to adding a +1 (modulo some fiddliness with range). The bonuses could just as easily be handled as die bumps: Instead of rolling 3d6 all the time, maybe I'm Fortune d4, Force d8 and Finesse d6. On the upside, this is kind of neat, especially if the dice can be shifted around dynamically[2] - it's got a very organic feel without adding math. The downside is that I've just complicated my life.
One of the big benefits of 3d6 is that it is demonstrably easy to learn by rote. D&D exposure means a lot of us can roll up stats in our sleep[3], and it's still pretty easy for those who haven't. Mixing up die sizes turns it into an actual mathematical exercise, removing some of the benefits of going to a dice model. It also increases the number of supplies needed. This is not a huge factor, but it's nice to know you have all the necessary dice needs covered with a handful of D6s rather than a bag full of D-everythings.
But for all that logic, I still really just dig the idea of trading dice values, especially on the fly. It triggers that gambling part of the brain I guess. That's a good reason to keep this one in mind - sometimes unreasonable fun can point to the right choice when mere logic fails.
One other option is to mess with the dice pool directly. The player could choose which 3 dice he rolled (3 fortune, two force and a finesse and so on). There's a little play there, but there are probably not enough choices to be interesting. But suppose we add more dice: make it a roll of multiple dice, perhaps 1 per "point" of the stat, then tally the best 3.[4] Basically it's a roll and keep model, but the number of kept dice is fixed at 3. Since the best 3 dice might be of any category, you are more likely to dominate with your high stat, but not guaranteed.
There's definitely some added complexity there - sorting dice is a mental process, much as adding them is, but it's not an overly complicated one, and at least it means you can stick to d6s. It may seem a trivial thing, but if you can only have 1 die type, the fact that d6s pack so compactly that you can buy them in bricks is a pretty big deal.
Now, for the most part I've been focusing on the dice and not giving much thought to the modifier to the roll. This is intentional because, to be frank, that's the easy bit. A skill list (pre-defined or user defined) plus an anticipated numeric range is all you need. Not to say there aren't mechanically interesting things you can do in that space, but rather that it's a very familiar space, and one that would be a whole other topic on its own.
Anyway, that seems like a good start for things we might do before the dice hit the table. Tomorrow, let's start looking at the different ways we can read them and what we can do with that information.
1 - As I was thinking of examples, I realized there are very few systems that call for post-roll choices normally, but it's fairly common in subsystems like specific powers. For example, if you have a power in 4e that lets you move the target, that's a post-success decision to make.
2 - For example, imagine a default 3d6 system. If I need to focus on finesse, I can bump my Force or Fortune die down to a d4, and my finesse up to a d8. If I really focus, I drop both Force and Fortune to d4s, and bump Finesse to a d10. I probably have some other mechanical control to determine how far I can focus any one particular die.
3 - This is, by the way, why I think the easiest way to do something like fudge dice is 3d6, use D&D stat modifiers. It's totally illogical, but if you've played enough 3rd ed, it's second nature to read the dice and convert it into a bonus or penalty.
4 - It would also be possible to roll X, tally the 3 of your choice. This gives the player control over what factor dominates, provided he's willing to choose a non-optimal roll. I'll probably come back to this one when we get to post-roll mechanics.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
FFF: First Thoughts
For those just coming in, this is going to be built on a previous post on a hypothetical resolution system of 3d6 (maybe +bonus) vs target number, with rich dice (dice that convey extra information). the dice respectively represent force, finesse and fortune.
The first thing to address is what this looks like in play. Even in the absence of mechanics, the dice can be useful for narrating an outcome. Just look at the highest die and use that to set the tone of the outcome. If the highest die is Force (representing strength and power) then that's easy: you land a hammer blow, you overwhelm the guard with your presence and you generally stomp on the problem. If it's Finesse (representing speed and precision) then t's equally easy: You find a gap in the armor, you subtly convey your point or you otherwise solve the problem with grace.
Those two are so clearly easy to envision that it's easy to not stop and think about Fortune. Because it's the most transparent concept (luck), and we know what luck looks like, we don't worry about it. But there's a danger there: describing luck is surprisingly hard. I mean, yes, it's easy to do a few times, but it gets very silly very quickly. The temptation, of course, is to describe luck in terms of coincidences. The guard just happens to slip on that puddle; the terrier just happens to fall on that guys head and so on. The more this happens the more it comes to resemble slapstick, and that's not terribly helpful for most games.
As such, the way to think about Fortune (and by extension, luck mechanics in most games) is in terms of opportunity. This has a number of advantages. First, it's much more tied to the situation at hand (falling terriers tend to be situation-independent) so it uses the color of the scene. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it makes the character proactive and keeps them at center stage. It's a small difference, but it's the difference between "The guard slips on a puddle" and "You drive him two steps back until his left foot is in the puddle, then take advantage of his bad footing to knock him down". The net result is the same (guard is on the floor) but the second sounds much more adventurous, and that's important.
I'm aware that this may seem like a sidetrack when compared to the mechanical possibilities of the system, but it's an important one. Coming up with a clever mechanic is all well and good, but if there is no clear way to turn it into the language of the table then it's never going to be anything more than awkward.[1]
Ok, so with that aside, let's start looking at ways to start this idea some mechanical purchase.
The simplest model is to have some sort of bonus trigger based on which die dominates (which is to say, which is the highest)[2]. This could be expressed generically: If Force dominates you get a bonus to damage (or damage equivalent), if Finesse dominates you get a bonus to this (or maybe the next) roll and if fortune dominates, you can maneuver. That works, and it strongly supports the color of the dice[3] but it offers very little in the way of player interface. This works roughly the same way whether my character is brawny or scrawny, and there's no way for me to make choices that impact this.
So here we have the first big fork: one way or another we want the impact of this to be responsive to player choice, but do we want it to be choices made during character creation (stats, skills), choices made in preparation (equipment, possibly spells), choices made in situation (tactics) or some combination of these?
Sounds like a good point to pick up tomorrow.
1 - This is actually a big factor, for good or ill, with 4e. By insisting on play with minis and maps, it changes the language of the table from one of description to one of 5 foot squares and numbers. In that second language, everything is very well written, coming together beautifully. The problem comes when you try to translate from the tactical language to the descriptive one: the guidelines for doing so are quite faint indeed.
2 - The term "dominates" is from Don't Rest Your Head, so it's very natural to me, but it could easily be changed to suit the tone of whatever the final game is. If you're feeling really nerdy this is a great place to put in one of those made up words that makes a game sound EVEN MORE dorky.
3 - Fortune might merit a switch to something more setting or situation specific, but that's easy. It's a wild card, and there's usually an obvious use for such a thing.
The first thing to address is what this looks like in play. Even in the absence of mechanics, the dice can be useful for narrating an outcome. Just look at the highest die and use that to set the tone of the outcome. If the highest die is Force (representing strength and power) then that's easy: you land a hammer blow, you overwhelm the guard with your presence and you generally stomp on the problem. If it's Finesse (representing speed and precision) then t's equally easy: You find a gap in the armor, you subtly convey your point or you otherwise solve the problem with grace.
Those two are so clearly easy to envision that it's easy to not stop and think about Fortune. Because it's the most transparent concept (luck), and we know what luck looks like, we don't worry about it. But there's a danger there: describing luck is surprisingly hard. I mean, yes, it's easy to do a few times, but it gets very silly very quickly. The temptation, of course, is to describe luck in terms of coincidences. The guard just happens to slip on that puddle; the terrier just happens to fall on that guys head and so on. The more this happens the more it comes to resemble slapstick, and that's not terribly helpful for most games.
As such, the way to think about Fortune (and by extension, luck mechanics in most games) is in terms of opportunity. This has a number of advantages. First, it's much more tied to the situation at hand (falling terriers tend to be situation-independent) so it uses the color of the scene. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it makes the character proactive and keeps them at center stage. It's a small difference, but it's the difference between "The guard slips on a puddle" and "You drive him two steps back until his left foot is in the puddle, then take advantage of his bad footing to knock him down". The net result is the same (guard is on the floor) but the second sounds much more adventurous, and that's important.
I'm aware that this may seem like a sidetrack when compared to the mechanical possibilities of the system, but it's an important one. Coming up with a clever mechanic is all well and good, but if there is no clear way to turn it into the language of the table then it's never going to be anything more than awkward.[1]
Ok, so with that aside, let's start looking at ways to start this idea some mechanical purchase.
The simplest model is to have some sort of bonus trigger based on which die dominates (which is to say, which is the highest)[2]. This could be expressed generically: If Force dominates you get a bonus to damage (or damage equivalent), if Finesse dominates you get a bonus to this (or maybe the next) roll and if fortune dominates, you can maneuver. That works, and it strongly supports the color of the dice[3] but it offers very little in the way of player interface. This works roughly the same way whether my character is brawny or scrawny, and there's no way for me to make choices that impact this.
So here we have the first big fork: one way or another we want the impact of this to be responsive to player choice, but do we want it to be choices made during character creation (stats, skills), choices made in preparation (equipment, possibly spells), choices made in situation (tactics) or some combination of these?
Sounds like a good point to pick up tomorrow.
1 - This is actually a big factor, for good or ill, with 4e. By insisting on play with minis and maps, it changes the language of the table from one of description to one of 5 foot squares and numbers. In that second language, everything is very well written, coming together beautifully. The problem comes when you try to translate from the tactical language to the descriptive one: the guidelines for doing so are quite faint indeed.
2 - The term "dominates" is from Don't Rest Your Head, so it's very natural to me, but it could easily be changed to suit the tone of whatever the final game is. If you're feeling really nerdy this is a great place to put in one of those made up words that makes a game sound EVEN MORE dorky.
3 - Fortune might merit a switch to something more setting or situation specific, but that's easy. It's a wild card, and there's usually an obvious use for such a thing.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Cool Monday: Instapaper
As excited as I am to get onto dice variants and Warhammer 3e, I need to maintain discipline. Monday posts exist primarily to remind myself that the internet has cool and wonderful things within its bounds. This offsets the other 6 days of the week when I face reminders of the cesspit parts.
There's a lot of good stuff to read on the Internet, but the simple reality is that it's a pain to keep track of it all. An RSS aggregator, like Google News or NetNewsWire goes a long way towards making the good stuff easier to keep track of, but it doesn't give me any extra time to read. That becomes a problem on those occasions when something very long and very thoughtful merits reading.
Historically, my solution was to see if they had a print view (because nothing says fun like clicking through 6 times to get through a piece) and either bookmark that or print it out in hopes of getting back to it later. Sometimes it worked, but even when it did it tended to result in a pile of stuff. That's not terrible, but it's lossy.
I've been much happier about these things since I found Instapaper.
So, Instapaper is sort of a clipping service, a lightweight and smartly designed one. It works like this: I find an article I'd like to read later, and I click on the Instapaper bookmarklet.[1] I get a little popup, and that's that. Later on, if I go to the Instapaper site, they've got the article archived for me, either in its original format or with much of the formatting stripped out (which makes it much easier for screen reading).
So far that's nice and convenient, but where it really shines is in how it works with other technology. First and foremost, you can export bundles of the articles you're reading into a variety of ebook formats. I have a fat batch of articles stores on my kindle to make for random reading anytime I need.[2]
Perhaps even better, there's an iphone/ipod touch app (both a free and paid version) which syncs with your account and keeps the articles on your device. As a touch owner, this has been a godsend. Because it archives them locally, I can read my articles while I'm offline.
Instapaper is the brainchild of Marco Arment, a name that might be familiar to folks who pay attention to Tumblr development. He is my current nerd rockstar, because so far as I'm concerned, that's a fantastic 1-2 punch.
Anyway, if you have a lot of stuff online you want to read, and you want to make you're life easier, then check out Instapaper. You'll know pretty quickly if it's the thing for you or not.
1 - That's nerdy term for a bookmark that does something. It's nothing technical that calls for installation or anything weird. It's just like any other bookmark in your browser.
2- It won't mail directly to the kindle, but that's more a function of Amazon's policies than a technical limitation.
There's a lot of good stuff to read on the Internet, but the simple reality is that it's a pain to keep track of it all. An RSS aggregator, like Google News or NetNewsWire goes a long way towards making the good stuff easier to keep track of, but it doesn't give me any extra time to read. That becomes a problem on those occasions when something very long and very thoughtful merits reading.
Historically, my solution was to see if they had a print view (because nothing says fun like clicking through 6 times to get through a piece) and either bookmark that or print it out in hopes of getting back to it later. Sometimes it worked, but even when it did it tended to result in a pile of stuff. That's not terrible, but it's lossy.
I've been much happier about these things since I found Instapaper.
So, Instapaper is sort of a clipping service, a lightweight and smartly designed one. It works like this: I find an article I'd like to read later, and I click on the Instapaper bookmarklet.[1] I get a little popup, and that's that. Later on, if I go to the Instapaper site, they've got the article archived for me, either in its original format or with much of the formatting stripped out (which makes it much easier for screen reading).
So far that's nice and convenient, but where it really shines is in how it works with other technology. First and foremost, you can export bundles of the articles you're reading into a variety of ebook formats. I have a fat batch of articles stores on my kindle to make for random reading anytime I need.[2]
Perhaps even better, there's an iphone/ipod touch app (both a free and paid version) which syncs with your account and keeps the articles on your device. As a touch owner, this has been a godsend. Because it archives them locally, I can read my articles while I'm offline.
Instapaper is the brainchild of Marco Arment, a name that might be familiar to folks who pay attention to Tumblr development. He is my current nerd rockstar, because so far as I'm concerned, that's a fantastic 1-2 punch.
Anyway, if you have a lot of stuff online you want to read, and you want to make you're life easier, then check out Instapaper. You'll know pretty quickly if it's the thing for you or not.
1 - That's nerdy term for a bookmark that does something. It's nothing technical that calls for installation or anything weird. It's just like any other bookmark in your browser.
2- It won't mail directly to the kindle, but that's more a function of Amazon's policies than a technical limitation.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Rich Dice: Force, Finesse and Fortune
Long car rides help me think, and the holidays is a time of many long car rides. Specifically, I found myself thinking about the forthcoming Dragon Age RPG. I'm pretty excited about this game, for a swath of reasons. It's Green Ronin, so right off the bat I have a certain amount of brand trust. The sales model (4 boxed sets, each representing a level range) makes me quite curious to see in action, and the bits that Chris Pramas has revealed so far about the system interest me greatly.[1] Though hell, he's put up another post: I need to read that!
The big thing is that the core mechanic is a 3d6 model, specifically 3d6 + Stat + thing-which-is-most-certainly-not-called-a-skill-but-is-basically-a-skill trying to hit a target number. Bonuses don't seem to be too huge, so target numbers are probably start in the 10-20 range. In short, it's not terribly removed from d20[2], excepting that the 3d6 curve is probably a bit more appealing to those who have been bent over the wheel of fate by flat rolling.
One interesting thing it does with this approach is to take something of a variant on d6's wild die with the "dragon die". One of your dice is the dragon die, and when you make a roll where degree of success matters, then that is not determined by how high you roll, but rather by the number showing on the dragon die. If it's a 1, your success is narrow, but on a 6 it's profound[3] and that translates into mechanical effects.
I dig this, because it's a great example of something that's started to be called "rich dice rolling". The idea is that in some games, a single roll of the dice can reveal many different and unrelated (or only loosely related) pieces of information. For example, the core system for Godlike and subsequent games called for rolling a number of d10s and building sets (like two 4s, three 7s and whatnot). Those rolls were considered to have a "height" - the number - and a "width" - the number of dice in the set. So a set of 3 sevens would have a height of 7 and a width of 3. Those two numbers were used to track different things, like how well something was done versus how long it took to do. In combat, for example, width determined if you hit, but height determined hit location.
This was a little bit different than including a "wild die" (one differently colored die with special significance) in a set of d6s, but the underlying idea was very similar, and subsequent games have experimented with other ways to make die rolls richer. Fred Hicks' Don't Rest Your Head may be the current grand champion for richest die rolls, with a sophisticated economy of events plugging away in the background based on dice color.
Taking this back to Dragon Age, I was pretty intrigued. I'm always on the lookout for a system that balances crunch and simplicity at just my sweet spot[4] and this initial overview of Dragon Age suggested it might be in that ballpark. But it also got me thinking about that dragon die, and about the other two dice.
Specifically, I found myself wondering if it would be possible to make all three dice into rich dice. It seemed reasonable: I wouldn't expect players to be able to keep track of more than maybe four rich dice, but sticking with three kept things intellectually manageable. Plus, three dice matches one of the criteria for my ideal pocket game (requiring nothing I can't carry in a small box), and three is an auspicious number, so why not?
So if they were rich, what would they be? The classic trilogy is Mind/Body/Spirit, and while I suspect that could probably work, it's a little bit abstract (especially in terms of spirit). I kicked it around a little more and realized I like the idea of one of the dice being luck - just all the stupid things that happen around us every day. That was satisfying, and it meant that I could make the remaining dice into an opposed pair. Good/Evil, Black/White, Tastes Great/Less Filling or anything else. I actually ended up thinking about something that is ubiquitous in gaming and a lot of fiction - strength vs. speed, or perhaps more precisely power vs. precision.[5]
I dig this division a lot, partly because Clauswitz vs. Jomini makes me do a little dance, but also because it's VERY easy to conceptualize, especially in a fight. That said, I was looking at two-thirds of an alliterative name with "Luck, Power & Precision" so I swapped it out for "Fortune, Force and Finesse".
So there was the bones. Roll 3d6, each of a different color (I'm totally undecided on color scheme - probably White/Red/Black because those are the easiest colors to get) and in addition to your total, you can sketch a quick image of how the roll succeeded or failed. Even if there's no mechanical support at all, it's useful information for the GM who is interested in how to color his descriptions[6].
But, of course, once you introduce something like this, the possibilities for how to use it mechanically start bubbling to the surface. "Oooh!" say some nerd hindbrain, "Force can also be the basis for damage, and finesse can be, um, armor penetration!" and so it begins.
That hindbrain been bubbling for a bit. Some of what it says isn't to bad, so next week, we'll see about exposing some of those ideas to the whithering power of daylight to see what becomes of them.
1- Curiously, for all that I LOVE the Dragon Age video game, that love doesn't really translate into real excitement for the RPG. I'm curious to read more about the setting, sure, but Bioware did such a solid job with the game that I haven't been left thinking "There are stories in Ferelden I feel still need to be told". Not that that will keep me from buying new downloadable content when it comes out. The connection mostly interests me because I'm not sure how it will shake out from a marketing perspective.
2 - by d20 I mean the core precept of the system: roll a d20, add some bonuses, try to hit a certain number or higher. I am by no means saying this is a d20 clone, or even anything close to that, but rather I'm saying that by making the basic resolution something familiar to someone who's been exposed to d20 maybe once, they are doing themselves a favor. Dice pools, chart lookups, success counting or weird dice are all well and good, but since one of the stated goals of the product is to grow the hobby, it's not too bad an idea to go with something this simple.
3 - Extra points if you use a ghost die for this.
4 - I still haven't quite found it, and there's a good chance I never will, but that's rather besides the point, isn't it?
5 - You can, incidentally, port this over to PDQ quite trivially, especially if your game or character has some central thematic conflict, like passion vs. reason. You can just designate one die to each pole, and use them to color how you play. When you're rolling more than 2 dice, then their source is either drama or awesomeness. Easy as pie.
6 - This is a practice that is at odds with the idea of "Only roll the dice when it matters", but many GMs will call for a roll that has no specific drama or any real chance of failure just so she can have some information to use as the seed of how she will describe events. An example would be calling for a sailing roll before taking a trip: a bad roll won't mean the trip won't happen, but it means the GM might describe the trip as stormy and encountering incidental problems.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Happy Turkey Day
Happy Thanksgiving!
No long message for today. I'm busy being overwhelmed by the sheer number of things I have to be thankful for. Friends and family, risks and opportunities, hopes and even fears. They're pretty amazing.
Also, my mom has made mealy puddin', and if you don't already know what it is, I assure you that you probably don't want to know more than the fact that her side of the family is the Scottish one.
So with that in mind, even if you don't celebrate the holiday, I hope it's a great day all the same.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Geist's Sleight of Hand
Monstrous horror is very rarely about what it's about. It's not that every piece of horror is explicitly a metaphor about something that you can point to, but there's usually something going on that we can identify with that makes it resonate with us. No one is really worried about vampires, but we do fear disease (and we worry about sex). We don't cower from tentacle horrors, but we all wrestle with the sense that the universe is an indifferent place that we can expect little kindness or understanding from.
A monster that doesn't strike these kinds of notes is just a colorful description. It's the literary equivalent of bad syfy cgi, bringing you Mansquito and his ilk. Most writers know this, but it's easy to blow past in the desire for novelty, and that can even work sometimes. Splatterpunk has an audience after all. But the good stuff? It's not about what it's about.
This lens is the reason I've always had a certain appreciation for White Wolf's games, though I never truly became a fan until the new Changeling came out. Through both iterations of the World of Darkness, they have been at their strongest when then games have not been about what they're about.
Now, the obvious joke to make here is one about emo supers, and while I'll concede that there's some truth to it, I'm thinking in a slightly different direction. Take Vampire, for example - more than anything it's a game about being on the inside. The vampires are the cliques who run things as we imagine them to be; pretty, petty and vicious. This is not a horror theme (though it has horror trappings), but it doesn't really need to be.
Of course, it's easy to punch a hole in that analysis. A game that seizes upon some other theme like alienation could still rock out, but the point is that it's still grabbing another recognizable theme and using vampires as a way to explore it.
The reason that Changeling grabbed me so much was because of this. It's a great story about fae and weirdness, but it sunk its teeth into me because it's also about the people who *matter* in your life (or about being mad at The Man, but that grabbed me less).
I mention all this because I feel like WW has performed a magic trick with Geist, one which just knocked my socks off when I saw it. As with other nWoD games, there's interesting cosmology and fun, dark, mystical things, but that's not what it's about. It's about the people who play in the World of Darkness, specifically twenty-somethings in group houses after college figuring out what they're going to do with their lives.
Seriously.
Geist has turned a number of WoD assumptions on their ear, explicitly swapping out the vast conspiracy for a lose (and gothy) confederation of nerds and artists. Better yet, one of the essential elements of character creation is coming up with the group's personal mythology.
There are a lot of other things I dig about Geist. The powers system may be my favorite of any of the nWoD games, and it builds on the foundations of really excellent products like Orpheus, but it is all left in the dust by the sheer magnificence of its undertone. A game about gamers that's not about gamers.
I raise a drink to that.
A monster that doesn't strike these kinds of notes is just a colorful description. It's the literary equivalent of bad syfy cgi, bringing you Mansquito and his ilk. Most writers know this, but it's easy to blow past in the desire for novelty, and that can even work sometimes. Splatterpunk has an audience after all. But the good stuff? It's not about what it's about.
This lens is the reason I've always had a certain appreciation for White Wolf's games, though I never truly became a fan until the new Changeling came out. Through both iterations of the World of Darkness, they have been at their strongest when then games have not been about what they're about.
Now, the obvious joke to make here is one about emo supers, and while I'll concede that there's some truth to it, I'm thinking in a slightly different direction. Take Vampire, for example - more than anything it's a game about being on the inside. The vampires are the cliques who run things as we imagine them to be; pretty, petty and vicious. This is not a horror theme (though it has horror trappings), but it doesn't really need to be.
Of course, it's easy to punch a hole in that analysis. A game that seizes upon some other theme like alienation could still rock out, but the point is that it's still grabbing another recognizable theme and using vampires as a way to explore it.
The reason that Changeling grabbed me so much was because of this. It's a great story about fae and weirdness, but it sunk its teeth into me because it's also about the people who *matter* in your life (or about being mad at The Man, but that grabbed me less).
I mention all this because I feel like WW has performed a magic trick with Geist, one which just knocked my socks off when I saw it. As with other nWoD games, there's interesting cosmology and fun, dark, mystical things, but that's not what it's about. It's about the people who play in the World of Darkness, specifically twenty-somethings in group houses after college figuring out what they're going to do with their lives.
Seriously.
Geist has turned a number of WoD assumptions on their ear, explicitly swapping out the vast conspiracy for a lose (and gothy) confederation of nerds and artists. Better yet, one of the essential elements of character creation is coming up with the group's personal mythology.
There are a lot of other things I dig about Geist. The powers system may be my favorite of any of the nWoD games, and it builds on the foundations of really excellent products like Orpheus, but it is all left in the dust by the sheer magnificence of its undertone. A game about gamers that's not about gamers.
I raise a drink to that.
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