RP for the last time

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My primary complaint with all the RP systems I've seen so far is the complexity level. If it's going to be simple, make it simple. If it's going to be hyper-realist, make it hyper-realist. I have no objection to either of these extremes. What irks me is that every system I have ever seen, with one exception, falls somewhere in the middle. In light of this fact, I am currently developing a pair of RP systems, one at each extreme. The lower-end system is an adaptation of AIMHack (sorry folks). My upper-end system is completely my own invention, using a d100 instead of a d20.

 

Could I have some people post me links to inspirational (not divinely so) material? Please?

 

Sincerely,

Fflewddur

[Alorael at Large]

The simplest form of RP is freeform. You write and it is so.

 

One step up from that is probably single page systems. Short isn't necessarily simple, but it's hard to cram immense complexity into so little space. (For a relatively complex mini-RPG, look at Minimus. For what I think is very elegant short-form game design, look at Lady Blackbird, which would actually work very well as an AIMHack-like online system.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't understand why the middle is bad. Hyper-realist becomes clunky, so you compromise. Decide what needs to be fine-grained and what doesn't. Turn it into a system that's fun. That's middle ground. A truly realistic system would require frequent halts in gameplay for physics calculations.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Originally Posted By: Alternatives to Justice

A truly realistic system would require frequent halts in gameplay for physics calculations.

Finally, an AIMHack that I would play! wait...

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I see. Thank you for the input. As for free-form RP, that boils down to cooperative story-telling, which, while it's totally awesome, it's not really a game. Your objection to extreme realism, Alternatives, seems justified, but sometimes I enjoy looking at every facet of something and just rolling my d20 for the sake of seeing how well-done my steak is. It has its own charm. I'm almost done with my simplified system, which you might want to look at. Some would argue that it's less simple than some they've seen, but that is debatable just because there are different kinds of simplicity.

 

Sincerely, Fflewddur

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Master1

Originally Posted By: Alternatives to Justice

A truly realistic system would require frequent halts in gameplay for physics calculations.

Finally, an AIMHack that I would play! wait...

Instead of rolling to fire your bow, you have to use vector calculus to find out whether or not the arrow would be sufficiently disrupted by air currents (given a specific set of initial conditions, or course!) to miss the target! Damage is worked out as a function of the time it takes you to calculate whether or not it hits!

Somebody get to work on this! My keyboard is almost out of exclamation marks!

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Thank you so much for the reading material. Lady Blackbird is precisely the sort of thing I was aiming for. The idea of a pool of d6s was one I was using as well. Thank you again for showing me. But now that I know that it has been done, I no longer feel impelled to do the same myself. Oh well, I'll just upscale my lower-end RP system.

 

Sincerely, Fflewddur

[Lilith]

A lot of things have already been done.

 

If I may make a suggestion, it'd probably be useful to think less in terms of what kind of dice you want to use and more in terms of what mechanics support the kind of play you're looking to encourage. The Forge is a pretty good source for RPG design theory, if you're not already familiar with it.

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Some dice are more common than others. A d6 is infuriatingly common. A d20 is somewhat harder to find and it took me a year of searching to lay my hands on a d4. So die size does matter.

Fflewddur

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Fflewddur Fflam: Drinker of Ale

Some dice are more common than others. A d6 is infuriatingly common. A d20 is somewhat harder to find and it took me a year of searching to lay my hands on a d4. So die size does matter.

Fflewddur

So instead of basing your dice usage off of statistical considerations or mechanics, you instead choose dice by intentionally picking the most obscure dice sizes possible. Will you also be listening to bands I've probably never heard of during play sessions for this game? And drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon?

[Triumph]

Originally Posted By: Fflewddur Fflam: Drinker of Ale

Some dice are more common than others. A d6 is infuriatingly common. A d20 is somewhat harder to find and it took me a year of searching to lay my hands on a d4. So die size does matter.

Fflewddur

E-bay and Amazon FTW!

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: Fflewddur Fflam: Drinker of Ale

it took me a year of searching to lay my hands on a d4

30 seconds on eBay, and I found 10 for £1.

And you know, pretty much any tabletop gaming shop will sell them if you don't have access to eBay. I live pretty much in the country, and I know I could get my hands on a d4 in under an hour of travel.

[Ephesos]

Well, if you want obscure dice...

 

I would second Lilith's point that the overall feel of the system is probably more important than which types of dice you use. AIMhack's central tenet is not that d20s are better than other dice, it's just that in an ideal session, a player should only ever need to know one rolling command.

 

As another example, D&D's d20 madness often becomes a much more detail-oriented pursuit of mechanical perfection, at times resembling a wargame simulation. As a counterpoint, the Savage Worlds system is all about 3 Fs: Fast, Furious, Fun.

 

And then of course, everything hinges on the DM. I've played in fantastically story-driven D&D campaigns, while I've heard many complaints from others that the current iteration is just wargaming. Ultimately, the kind of campaign the DM runs will be what they want to run... so I suppose the idea is that the system and the campaign should not be at odds with one another.

[Rowen]

Originally Posted By: Fflewddur Fflam: Drinker of Ale

Some dice are more common than others. A d6 is infuriatingly common. A d20 is somewhat harder to find and it took me a year of searching to lay my hands on a d4. So die size does matter.

Fflewddur

Really? I just went to the mall and picked up a pack that had a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and a d20. There were a ton more dice to get but I didn't bother with them.

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: Ephesos

Well, if you want obscure dice...

...

I used to have (what I thought was) a good joke about how Call of Cthulhu should be played with odd-number-sided dice. It's ruined now. Thanks a lot, Ephesos.



Like Rowen, I have several Friendly Local Gaming Stores nearby, all of which would sell dice packs. But these niche shops can't be found everywhere. Certainly not in Prydain.

[Alorael at Large]

I've seen an RPG that uses only d12s. The justification? Your d12s feel lonely and abandoned.

 

—Alorael, who rejects non-Platonic solids. Banish your d10!

[Dantius]

And failing Amazon or friendly local gaming store, what I do to generate random numbers as rolled by an n-sided dice:

 

 

Code:

D[n]=1+floor[n*rand[]]

 

It annoys me to no end that 89's lack a RandInt[1,n] command like the 83's and 84's. For such an obviously advanced machine, they can't incorporate one simple additional function they had a generation ago?

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Originally Posted By: Carving Spoon

I've seen an RPG that uses only d12s. The justification? Your d12s feel lonely and abandoned.

—Alorael, who rejects non-Platonic solids. Banish your d10!

And your d8.

As for finding the dice, I live in Manila, where specialty stores are out of the question.

As for deliberately using obscure stuff, I'm doing the exact opposite. I am deliberately avoiding anything more uncommon than a pack of cards or a six-sided die. See my point now?

Anything more constructive?

Fflewddur

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Well, I finished. I won't bore anyone with details, but I will bore you exceedingly by explaining my core mechanic. Roll xd6 where x equals your level of skill in a field, then remove from the pool any results of 1 or 2. The remainder, which we shall call y, then gets put through y-z=a, where z equals the DC of an attack, a bluff, etc. I Then, if a>0, you succeed. If a<1, you fail. If a>3, you succeed easily with exceptionally good results. If a<-2, then you fail miserably and incur some extra consequence of failure.

 

Regards, Fflewddur

[Alorael at Large]

Don't express it as subtraction. Call it rolling against a target number. If you roll higher than that number, you succeed. More than 3 higher, you succeed even more. More than two under your target, and you fail abjectly.

 

—Alorael, who has two reasons for this. One, nobody likes subtraction. Two, nobody likes adding an extra and unnecessary complication.

[Aoslare]

So basically, each level of skill you have gives you an average of 3 points towards beating the DC of an attack, bluff, or whatever. There is substantial randomness involved when your skill level is low, and less when it is high. But basically, this is just comparing 3 x skill level with the DC, and throwing in a bunch of randomness. That's your core mechanic?

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Arms: I found subtraction easier to express in text.

Slarty: I said I was aiming for simplicity.

 

Fflewddur

[Aoslare]

If you're aiming for simplicity, why roll a bunch of dice in the first place?

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Ah, an excellent question, Slarty. There are two good reasons why I choose to do so. One: It was fun doing it. Two: I have little to do in life and a lot of time to do it in. So I often start doing pointless things. If this hurdle gets nothing but negative criticism, it will shortly disappear, never to be heard from again, and I will start work on a tactical wargaming engine.

 

Best, Fflewddur Fflam

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

So basically, each level of skill you have gives you an average of 3 points towards beating the DC of an attack, bluff, or whatever. There is substantial randomness involved when your skill level is low, and less when it is high. But basically, this is just comparing 3 x skill level with the DC, and throwing in a bunch of randomness. That's your core mechanic?

I think you're misinterpreting.

The way I read it, every die that rolls 3, 4, 5 or 6 counts as one point, and every die that rolls 1 or 2 counts as zero points. If the number of points you get exceeds the target number, your action succeeds. It's a pretty standard dice-pool mechanic.

[Sarachim]

EDIT: Never mind, I misread Lilith.

[Alorael at Large]

Actually, that was my initial interpretation, but after rereading the post I'm not actually sure. Is that the intent?

 

—Alorael, who is also a bit curious about the 67% odds per die if dice are binary success/fail and very curious if they're summed but low numbers count for nothing. There's nothing wrong with avoiding 50% odds, but they're easier for players to think through. You could also give different things different targets against which to roll, so that sometimes, say, a 5 or 6 on the die succeeds, and other times anything but a 1 does.

[nikki.]

Quote:

Fflewddur Fflam[/font]

Question: why?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Take my words and go

You could also give different things different targets against which to roll, so that sometimes, say, a 5 or 6 on the die succeeds, and other times anything but a 1 does.

The original system for World of Darkness did this. Long story short, it turns out it's a bad idea, as it interacts in bizarre ways with a lot of other possible mechanics that would otherwise be sensible.

[A less presumptuous name.]

Originally Posted By: Nikki.

Question: why?

Answer: why not?

[Student of Trinity]

The great bad wargame Titan has a similar combat system, if I'm understanding this right. Every type of unit in Titan has a skill factor (2 to 4, modifiable to 1 or 5 by terrain) and a strength factor (3 to 18 or even higher in principle for a few rare units). The strength is how many hits you can take, and also how many d6's you roll when attacking. Depending on the relative skill factors of the attacker and defender, you may need as high as a six on a d6 to score a hit, or as low as a two.

 

It works surprisingly well. Centaurs, with skill 4 but strength 3, are essentially bound to land a few hits on anything; but no more than that, before they get swatted. Serpents, with skill 2 but strength 18, get to roll fistfuls of dice, but usually have disappointingly few hits. Still it takes a long time to bring a Serpent down, and occasionally one will get lucky and pulverize its opponent in one round. (The Serpent is certainly a stronger unit than a Centaur; the game values units by the product of skill and strength, so a Serpent should be worth three Centaurs.)

 

Anyway, the system successfully gives flavor as well as tactics. It's fun rolling big heaps of dice. In many ways Titan is a terrible game, that goes on way too long for the amount of control you get over your forces. Playing is about half spectating. But somehow it's a blast. Beer helps.

[Aoslare]

Originally Posted By: Master1

Answer: why not?

Because gratuitous embellishments which are repeated over and over again, but which do not actually serve to communicate or distinguish any new content when repeated, sometimes come off as pretentious?

[VCH]

Originally Posted By: Master1

Originally Posted By: Alternatives to Justice

A truly realistic system would require frequent halts in gameplay for physics calculations.

Finally, an AIMHack that I would play! wait...

Why don't we just go play some variant of paint-ball.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

Because gratuitous embellishments which are repeated over and over again, but which do not actually serve to communicate or distinguish any new content when repeated, sometimes come off as pretentious?

*snort drink out nose*

[Student of Trinity]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

*snort drink out nose*

See? Pretentious.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

Originally Posted By: Dantius

*snort drink out nose*

See? Pretentious.

Yeah, and my caviar got ruined when I knocked over my glass of scotch from laughing so hard. How am I even supposed to start to deal with this!?

[Student of Trinity]

<sniff>

Well, if you were eating caviar with Scotch, it was ruined anyway, old bean.

</sniff>

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Originally Posted By: Take my words and go

You could also give different things different targets against which to roll, so that sometimes, say, a 5 or 6 on the die succeeds, and other times anything but a 1 does.

The original system for World of Darkness did this. Long story short, it turns out it's a bad idea, as it interacts in bizarre ways with a lot of other possible mechanics that would otherwise be sensible.

Yes, I got the idea from oWoD. It doesn't work perfectly in that system, but that's in part because the system is actually a hodgepodge that was only somewhat wrangled into playable form. It could be done well.

—Alorael, who thinks that it's most interesting when you're given opportunities to, say, change the number of dice versus change the difficulty. If you can stack these things, it's either a way of obfuscating the odds or a challenge to come up with clever stacking tricks. That might not be a mechanical system you like, but it's a reasonable one.

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Originally Posted By: Out in the waking world

Don't express it as subtraction. Call it rolling against a target number. If you roll higher than that number, you succeed. More than 3 higher, you succeed even more. More than two under your target, and you fail abjectly.

—Alorael, who has two reasons for this. One, nobody likes subtraction. Two, nobody likes adding an extra and unnecessary complication.

It's because subtraction serves another purpose. Instead of damage dice, the damage you deal is equal to the variable "a" which, you will remember is achieved by subtracting.

Happy birthday, Fflewddur

[Alorael at Large]

I still wouldn't express it that way. Call the damage the number by which you exceed z (and please, please give these numbers more elegant names). Mathematically it's still subtraction, but any time you start asking for arithmetic explicitly you're going to lose players.

 

—Alorael, who also can't divine damage mechanics from rolling mechanics. If you have a system, post the whole system for critique.