Amazing mechanical solutions

[angelfromanotherpin]

While it is clever, it also makes it effectively impossible to (fairly) bring in additional players after the start of the campaign. That can be a sizeable bug to some people.

This isn't actually true, anyone can buy in after the fact to the 'x.5' ranks.

At the same time, I strongly suspect silva is just regurgitating the actual author's description of the auction method's effects, because he's using something really close to a verbatim quote.

[Pixels]

I do realize this is a silva thread and therefore perhaps not the place for seriousness, but I can't help but put in a word for Pandemic's intensify mechanic.

Pandemic is a co-op board game where you try to cure a number of disease outbreaks across the globe. Which cities get infected with disease is based on drawing cards out of the infection deck. There is only one card for each city in the deck, so a city can only get one more cube of a disease... until somebody draws an epidemic card from the (normally helpful) player deck. Drawing an epidemic card does a few nasty things, but the real neat part mechanically involves shuffling the discard pile of the infection deck and putting it back on top. This is called intensifying, because now cities that already have been infected will soon get worse or suffer a relapse.

This plus outbreaks actually does a neat job of modeling disease spread, and provides a lot of dramatic tension when drawing infection cards just after an intensify. As a bonus, the difficulty of the game can be adjusted easily by adding or removing epidemic cards from the player deck. Gotta love mechanics that are simple, thematic, and serve multiple purposes!

[kzt]

Yeah, Champions chargen basically requires the use of linear algebra.

I've normally used software for building HERO characters for roughly forever. Doing it by hand can get pretty damn fiddly, particularly if you are trying to squeeze every point until it begs for mercy.

That said, you can build basic characters by hand fairly quickly if you know what you want them to do and know what the limits on characters are supposed to be. You will just not be highly optimized.

[Ice9]

Yeah; if I'm not worrying about a point budget, I can make a HERO character quite fast. Faster than a D&D character, in many cases.

Even keeping to a point budget, but not worried about being fully optimized (and you can easily be brokenly powerful without being fully optimized), it's a pretty quick process. Slower than a 1st level D&D character, but faster than a mid+ level one.

Squeezing the most from every point? That's slow. On par with high-level D&D gear shopping (well it should be, it's basically the same thing). For this, I'll definitely use the software when it's available.

[CCarter]

For old ideas, the bit where your success chance and the power of your action are separate things and rolled separately is excellent and in all ways better than when you use one number which decides both your success chance and power in one.

Same with defence structures and target numbers. Two axis of resolution are much better than one. But three is only slightly better and mostly just slower, and more than three is silly.


Also, simple linearly accumulative damage and critical existence failure. Binary functionality. All good stuff and better than the alternatives for many good reasons.

I'll second the motion to if you would please unpack these a bit.
I'm assuming for the first thing, you're talking about something like separate hit/damage rolls, for instance? If so, why is this better?
Also not sure what an 'axis of resolution' is.

[John Magnum]

I assume he means an independent dimension of how good you are at a task. So if there's a single roll that accounts for everything, that's one axis. If there's one roll for "how likely am I to succeed?" and a second for "given that I've succeeded, how well did I do?", that's two. You could have a third with "How long did it take me to do it?", and you could easily imagine separating a task into multiple such dimensions that could be rolled individually.

[tussock]

Tussock, care to give an example of that kind of "one axis" rule ? I dont remember seeing any. Even 1e D&D tracked chance of success and damage separately, no ?

Yes it did. One-axis resolution systems are things like the 3e skill system, where more powerful effects and less likely events are the same thing for everyone. And it's so bad at doing everything that whole chunks of it get thrown out and you just can't use it for anything that matters to the game.

There's also Mutants & Masterminds where the hit roll determines the basic damage numbers, so high skill and massive power are almost exactly the same thing. Anything with margin-of-success determining your effect immediately struggles to describe a bus, a rhino, or a castle wall. Let alone a briar bush for Br'er Rabbit to be thrown into.


The mentioned 2-axis system in early Shadowrun falls apart because the RNG is tiny and the modifiers are huge by comparison. It's a d6, so +3 is the whole game, and sometimes they generate numbers like TN 14 on that d6. Then either you've bullshitted up +11 and broken the game or you lose like everyone else. Effectively one dominant axis of shifting the target numbers, with the number of successes only mattering when you're coincidentally in range there.


Three-axis is like GURPS4 combat: with a targeting function, a penetration function, and a damage function. It covers a huge amount of conceptual space, but you usually ignore the penetration step because it's not really needed. Just stops you killing large, heavily armoured vehicles with a pistol (or anything that's not designed to kill armour), while also keeping a super-science tank-killing pistol from obliterating PCs (like it does in RIFTS with megadamage).

Then of course, GURPS ignores that for the non-combat parts of the game and drops back to a single-axis resolution function. Which consequently sucks.

[Dogbert]

There's also Mutants & Masterminds where the hit roll determines the basic damage numbers, so high skill and massive power are almost exactly the same thing.

I seriously commend you to read M&M, because that paragraph didn't have anything to do with M&M's Toughness system. Indeed it's the whole other way around (the higher you take your attack bonus, the less damage you can do).

[Omegonthesane]

I assume he means an independent dimension of how good you are at a task. So if there's a single roll that accounts for everything, that's one axis. If there's one roll for "how likely am I to succeed?" and a second for "given that I've succeeded, how well did I do?", that's two. You could have a third with "How long did it take me to do it?", and you could easily imagine separating a task into multiple such dimensions that could be rolled individually.

In theory, In Nomine does this with the d666 mechanic - two of the dice determine success or failure, the third determines how extreme the success or failure was.

In practice, any moderately optimised character will auto-pass any skill roll they care about, and if your roll-under target is larger than 12 the difference is added to your CD, so any seriously optimised character will pass their attack rolls with a +3 to the d6 check digit, or a +6 if they're using a sufficiently accurate weapon.

[silva]

Another mechanic I really like is the "Obsession" mechanics from Unknown Armies adepts: you get stronger the more you actually live out your obsession, doing completely crazy, potentially damaging or social disrupting stuff, like say, an Epideromancer (one who can manipulate living matter) gains magickal charges by cutting and damaging himself, and a Luckymancer (cant remember the right name, one who has power over chance and luck) gains magickal charges the more he risks his own luck, like throwing himself in front of cars in the highway. And you must do these things in-game. Its a totally different thing from other belief-based magic where you say some fluff like "my mage beliefs in this so his magic works like that and now Ill throw a fireball", no, in Unknown Armies its not enough to talk the talk, you must actually walk the walk, in-game, while taking all the very damaging consequences to your own character. Live the obsession or die trying. And all that implemented in a very neat way through charges and taboo. Awesome.

*EDIT* by the way, Unknown Armies follows the "hard choices & consequences" trend that I love so much in gaming. You wanna do magic ? Sure, take this spell. oh but for fueling it you must risk your social life, your meat, and your sanity. Have a happy life.

[PoliteNewb]

Another mechanic I really like is the "Obsession" mechanics from Unknown Armies adepts: you get stronger the more you actually live out your obsession, doing completely crazy, potentially damaging or social disrupting stuff, like say, an Epideromancer (one who can manipulate living matter) gains magickal charges by cutting and damaging himself, and a Luckymancer (cant remember the right name, one who has power over chance and luck) gains magickal charges the more he risks his own luck, like throwing himself in front of cars in the highway. And you must do these things in-game. Its a totally different thing from other belief-based magic where you say some fluff like "my mage beliefs in this so his magic works like that and now Ill throw a fireball", no, in Unknown Armies its not enough to talk the talk, you must actually walk the walk, in-game, while taking all the very damaging consequences to your own character. Live the obsession or die trying. And all that implemented in a very neat way through charges and taboo. Awesome.

*EDIT* by the way, Unknown Armies follows the "hard choices & consequences" trend that I love so much in gaming. You wanna do magic ? Sure, take this spell. oh but for fueling it you must risk your social life, your meat, and your sanity. Have a happy life.

Obviously, I can't judge this as a mechanic without seeing the actual mechanics, but it sounds pretty terrible. Whether or not it is worthwhile/fun depends upon how much you get for how much you risk.

But you mentioned "throwing yourself in front of cars". How likely is that (in game) to result in death? Because taking a significant chance of death for a small increment of power is a fool's game, that is going to result in your death before long...there's a reason it's called "Gambler's Ruin", not "Gambling Is Awesome".

[silva]

Polite, in Unknown Armies there are different size of magical charges for fueling spells of different power levels: gambling your month´s salary and gambling your life would result in very different charges received, which would fuel different level magical effects. For the Luckymancer in question, a minor spell (fueled by a minor charge) could mean a one-instant "lucky roll" (swapping the tens for the digits in a d10 roll), while a siginificant spell could mean you just stumble in the corner with the exact person you were desperately looking for - what a luck! - and a major spell - the one you risked your life together with your mother, father and son life to fuel - may mean you win the 20 million lottery ticket and get filthy rich and retire (though a real Luckymancer would probably gamble the 20 millions together with his life and his family again just to see where it gets him to. ).

Also, there is taboo: if you do something that goes completely against your obsession (like, say, doing something perfectly safe/unrisky in the case of the Luckymancer above) then - PUFF! - you lose all your charges and start again from zero. This means you cant even sleep in the safety of a home otherwise you risk losing your charges. See where its leading to in regard to your social life and sanity ?

I dont have the book on me right now, so I cant give the specifics, but thats the logic. Its a very ingenious rule really. Ill take a look at the book when Im home and give more info.

[fectin]

So UA=fishmalk. Got it.

[Nath]

The Dark Side Pool: For a system with dice pools. The gamemaster puts a bucket with some colored dice in front of him. Players are free to pick up additional dice from it whenever they want to boost their roll. Whatever the result, the player keeps the dice in front of him until the GM "call the favor back". The GM can then use each dice either as a negative modifier for the player, or positive modifier for one of its opponent. Originally used in Star Wars RPG, the idea was of course to use those at the worst possible moment (typically requiring the character to roll Willpower to avoid making an easy -and evil- choice, and applying all the dark side dice he used as negative modifiers).

It can be adapted to system where you roll a single dice by replacing the dice with chips or coins giving a +1 modifier each.

[Kaelik]

The Dark Side Pool: For a system with dice pools. The gamemaster puts a bucket with some colored dice in front of him. Players are free to pick up additional dice from it whenever they want to boost their roll. Whatever the result, the player keeps the dice in front of him until the GM "call the favor back". The GM can then use each dice either as a negative modifier for the player, or positive modifier for one of its opponent. Originally used in Star Wars RPG, the idea was of course to use those at the worst possible moment (typically requiring the character to roll Willpower to avoid making an easy -and evil- choice, and applying all the dark side dice he used as negative modifiers).

It can be adapted to system where you roll a single dice by replacing the dice with chips or coins giving a +1 modifier each.

Kind of a terrible mechanic, because the obvious solution is on the important roll to just double down on darkside if they call all your hits in, you just grab that many more dice, it cancels out, and now they have to wait until some time when the roll isn't important to use the negative points from darkside.

[fectin]

No; you want to fail the dark side rolls doubling down is just the express train to Sadpandaland.

[Dean]

With no further caveats it just seems like the solution is to pick up geometrically increasing amounts of dice. If I do one task and take 1 extra die, then I should just take 3 the next time the DM wants to use that die against me, then 10, then 100.

One of the d20 star wars systems used a similar system where you basically level up your dark side or light side use. Using either gave you some pool of d6's to add to a d20 roll and the dark side pool started at 3d6 and increased slowly where the lightside pool started at 1d6 and increased more quickly. So focusing on the dark side path was more immediately rewarding but the suckers game in the long run. That was elegant.

[fectin]

DM rolls to see how much you suck. Adding more dice makes you suck more.

[Kaelik]

No; you want to fail the dark side rolls doubling down is just the express train to Sadpandaland.

That is not what was said.

The GM can then use each dice either as a negative modifier for the player, or positive modifier for one of its opponent.

If the GM uses dice for the opponent or as a negative on you on an important roll, then you just grab more dice and it cancels it out, and then later on some less important roll you let the GM make you lose.

Making up some other roll not mentioned anywhere is fine, but I can't be expected to know about rules that no one writes down in this thread.

[Dean]

DM rolls to see how much you suck. Adding more dice makes you suck more.

I don't understand what you're saying. By the system Nath described you add dice from a dark side pool to your regular die pool making you more likely to succeed. But at any later point the DM might use those dice against you which would indeed suck. Except if you just keep increasing the amount of dice you used you would always have a larger pool than the DM because he would only have last rounds dice to throw at you. Why would adding more dice make you suck more?

[fectin]

Because he makes arbitrary rolls, which aren't opposed. So if it's DnD, he adds it to damage, or to an attack roll, or whatever.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Because he makes arbitrary rolls, which aren't opposed. So if it's DnD, he adds it to damage, or to an attack roll, or whatever.

I would have assumed you could use it to boost a save DC or AC or negate damage, not just boost a saving throw or attack roll or damage roll.

[fectin]

Well, also in star wars d6, they were only available at the GM's whim.

[Kuri Näkk]

One-axis resolution systems are things like the 3e skill system, where more powerful effects and less likely events are the same thing for everyone. And it's so bad at doing everything that whole chunks of it get thrown out and you just can't use it for anything that matters to the game.

The 3ed skill system has many flaws, however, I am not sure one-axis resolution is one of them. Why would you like to distinguish between less likely and more powerful effects for skill such as Climb or Bluff? How do you htink the two-axis resolution should work?

[silva]

So UA=fishmalk. Got it.

Wut ?