Doubt Mechanics

[Username17]

OK, so I'm putting together some stuff for Doubt, and I think I'll go through with it. Should be playtestable by mid summer. But I also wanted to bounce some core mechanics off of people to see how they'd fly.

In answer to the first question: No. I haven't made a final decision as to whether to go with a short bell curve, a pair of percentile dice, or a dice pool of d6s. All of them have advantages and disadvantages, and all of them can work for a contemporary setting. I'll think about it more.

But anyway, one of the core conceits of the game is that player characters will discover their own abilities. Indeed, some of the playable archetypes have as their main story that they do not actually understand what the fuck is going on or even necessarily who they are. In essence, every player is confronted with the inherent problems of an Amnesiac character - there are things that their character can do that they do not in fact know that they can do. However, as you doubtlessly know, that is potentially a pain in the ass. Having the MC put together a secret character sheet for every player to merge with their known story and their secret story would make it very hard to pick up and play. Like, if you thought chargen sessions took a long time before.

So to address that, I was thinking of having the secret character sheets get procedurally generated during play. Like with the advancement cards from aWoD, but seriously drawn in the middle of play when players "find out" more about themselves and the way reality is malleable.

The idea is that the secret card draws over the course of the game allow the players to make their character sheets fast and start playing (because they start incomplete) and also allow the MC to manage secret character sheets for everyone without doing a fuck tonne of work.

-Username17

[fectin]

Sounds like traveller style. That's not a bad thing, but can be frustrating for players.
MC still has a fair amount of work, it's just less frontloaded. Also, all the secret powers would have to be passive, otherwise I'm not sure how you'd discover them. What sort of powers were you thinking of?

Also, which minigames were you thinking should be detailed?

[Manxome]

Presumably that means that the MC doesn't know about the powers until they're revealed, either, so they cannot have any effect on gameplay before then. So you're not so much discovering that you have been unconsciously using this power all along (except insofar as you can retcon things) as you are gaining a level.

Which also means there needs to be some criteria determining when you draw a card, which has nothing to do with the card that you draw (since it's not known). Maybe powers spontaneously manifest under some vaguely-defined crisis conditions, like the eidolons in FF13...which in practice probably means that the MC hands them out at planned plotpoints or when he needs a way to prevent you from dying. Or maybe players could choose to gain a new power once per adventure, like in Dark Forest, though you'd need some reason that players wouldn't all just pick "immediately".

Of course, if the MC does know about the powers in advance, then this is just an algorithm for generating the secret character sheets randomly. Which probably isn't substantially less work.


If you play a long campaign, do players continue to accumulate more and more power cards, or do they cycle out, or do you just stop drawing them after the first session or two?

[fectin]

I read that wrong. Thought the PCs didn't get to see the cards.

[Lokathor]

If card draws are in play, when a card draw would come up, have the MC draw the card. They look at it, see what the player got, think about it for a moment, and then the scene plays out.

At some point during the scene the MC introduces the power to the player if possible, the player has activated it for the first time inadvertently. This doesn't always work, so when it doesn't work you just skip that part.

Once the scene is done, the MC hands the card to the player and now they know what they got, and they write it on their sheet and so on, adding it into their ability set.

[TheFlatline]

One idea is to have a certain number of powers: say six.

The DM draws six power cards at chargen. This is what the player will eventually have access to. There's also some basic defensive powers that the players just "get".

When the characters use their "powers" you roll a D6 to see which power manifests, or MC can fiat depending on the situation.

Once a power is used 5 times, it "unlocks" and can be chosen at will. Each successive power takes more successful uses to unlock. Power two may take 15 uses. Power 3 may take 20 or 25, and so on. Once the fifth power is unlocked, I'm not sure how to maintain the system for the final power.

Perhaps once you "earn" a power, a new power is added to the set of six and the old power is crossed off.

The "secret character sheet" at that point would be an index card per character with a list of six powers, numbered, and hash marks next to them. Not necessarily a big burden for the GM. Initiative would be a more involved/complicated bookeeping effort.

The result would be that most of the powers are generally unreliable, even once you figure out what the do. As you master them, you occasionally manifest new powers that aren't always available for you. Sometimes you'd manifest a power that has no relation to your current situation, and thus would apparently never go off. That, combined with the plausible explanation requirement for the powers would result in some serious in-character doubt until the powers slowly became reliable.

[Grek]

Here's how I would handle power allocations:

Each character has a certain number of powers. 3, for example. When play starts on the first adventure for a character, all of these powers are undefined. Whenever there is an oppertunity for a character to use a power, they can either choose to use a power that they have already, use an undefined power (and, in doing so define the power as being a randomly selected power that is applicable here) or choose not to use a power at all.

Some of these opertunities to use a power can be player defined. For example, they could ask the DM for oracular insight into some topic or another, and, if they do that, they get a random divination power that could be used in this situation.

Each power would also come with a condition (randomly defined, or intrinsic to the power) wherein you loose the power if that condition occurs. Example would be a extreme accuracy power that goes away if you ever try to use it while not wearing your lucky socks that you were wearing when you first manifested the power. This condition would not be known to the player, in most cases.

[Josh_Kablack]

So to address that, I was thinking of having the secret character sheets get procedurally generated during play. Like with the advancement cards from aWoD, but seriously drawn in the middle of play when players "find out" more about themselves and the way reality is malleable.

I vigorously endorse spreading the meme.

[Username17]

Some of these opertunities to use a power can be player defined. For example, they could ask the DM for oracular insight into some topic or another, and, if they do that, they get a random divination power that could be used in this situation.

Yes, I can definitely see the advantage of having different charts for different situations. So in some cases, the 3♣ has a specific meaning, but in other times it's just important that you drew a ♣ rather than a face or a ♥. So your advancement could be more or less directed, with the MC choosing how directed it is. The "general advancement" chart has a lot less redundancy than the "divinatory abilities" chart.

One of the things that I hope to accomplish with the variably directed growth is to obscure whether or not the MC has a plan. That when you discover more about yourself or the Registry or the Lost Places or whatever, it could be part of a story or a plan or it could literally be random chance. As the players "solve" the mystery they are also in essence writing it.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

Maybe, by having Opposed Suites have Powers of opposite abilities? So, hearts is all "Repair", clubs "Offense", Spades "Action", Diamonds "Physical World". Players could "play hands" The different "classes" of Spellcaster are randomly chosen from tables that could range from 4 (verbal component [hearts], somatic components [clubs], item components [spades], focus components [diamonds]; and yes this association works awesomely.... you could just "play" a game with this; I'd honestly say hands sizes should equal the number of players; or the fingers on your hand. Cards refresh or replace; their bonuses are equal to the value of the card; people will toss out +3 Hp out like candy. However, you hang on to a face card since they are something of one of several levels of awesome (in a completely mortal game; they're like a maxed out mortal grade car; more jet-less batmobile, than invisible james bond shootan' car [Bond is pretty heroic]), to 52 different types (Casting like one of the four Kings, queens; like the 3 of Spades, or the 10 of diamonds seem like potentially interesting propositions; mostly because I have no idea what that could look like, how the hell do you make them balanced?

Maybe you draw two cards, one for scale and flavor, the other for width and power, the size of the area covered on the cards, represents how much of the scene could be affected by their powers; their range; however, with range comes gradual drop off of power. If you use an actual AoE effect, you only use your lowest possible power level. Making low numbers use full effect of their 'power' as a character, a 10 uses 1/10th of their power.

Face cards however do none of the "basic" effects, and instead have their own set effects that scale with character power. Kings as Dominate/Leadership/Something, Jacks are Trickery/Deception/Hermic type stuff Queens get All Diplomacy/Knowledge/Divination.

Of course, you could seriously just have many different tables, and you could seriously never really know what you will be casting like. Someone draws from a Tarot type deck in one table, or rolls a d%, or a d20, or the value of your card determines your power, or either black, or red or face; or suite. You've literally got more types of magic than you could shake a stick at. Gamma World character creation tables might be one good analogy.

[Orion]

Judging Eagle, I have an entirely serious question for you:

Are you satisfied with your ability to communicate with real-life people? Do they understand what you are trying to say to them most of the time?

If so, what are you doing in meatspace that you aren't doing here? Does it bother you that none of us can understand you?

If not, do you have a game plan for dealing with that? It's a pretty big quality of life issue.

[Neurosis]

Doubt seems really interesting, but why are none of its threads in the homebrew forum and here instead? That has been confusing me.

[Username17]

Doubt seems really interesting, but why are none of its threads in the homebrew forum and here instead? That has been confusing me.

Because at this point nothing is set in stone or finished. It's discussion, not homebrew.

I put things in Homebrew when they are finished or in need of simple proofreading.

-Username17

[Username17]

OK, one of the major mechanics is going to be drawing cards to have things happen. So one of the main probability manipulation powers can be getting the MC to draw extra secret cards and swap them in for the card that was supposed to be drawn if they match.

This means that asking the universe for incredibly specific things just probably won't work - because the power only succeeds if an incredibly specific card is drawn. But asking the universe for general stuff works all the time in an incredibly general and non-specific fashion.

Another thing that happens is that clues to the mystery are bluffs. That is, while a card is drawn and looked at, the contents of the card don't actually matter - it's actually scripted by the narrative. So you could potentially card count random, unrelated events to notice that something is out of place. I regard that as a feature.

-Username17

[Manxome]

I'm not sure I understood that explanation. It sounds like you're suggesting:

1. There is a deck of cards that you occasionally draw from to determine random events in the game.
2. There is a power that causes the MC to secretly draw several cards instead of one, and use the first one that meets some criteria you specify, or a random/arbitrary one if none of them do. Thus, if you choose a broad criteria, you're likely to get a card that meets it.
3. Cards representing something important to the plot are removed in advance (and not shown to the players), so the players can figure them out by process of elimination.

Those all sound potentially interesting, though I'm seeing a lot of obstacles with no obvious solutions, especially to fulfilling all three of those at once.

You presumably will specify some criteria under which a card is drawn, such as "when you enter an area that the MC hasn't pregenerated" or "whenever the MC wants to give you a clue". This criteria presumably needs to be generic enough that it will consistently happen several times per playing session, but also chosen carefully so that any card you happen to draw is usable. For example, the random results suitable for "what do you find in the suitcase?", "what do you find on the data disk?" and "what do you find in the dark room?" are probably all quite different. You could maybe go really generic and say that they are things that can happen to you regardless of what you're doing at the time, like "monster attack", "earthquake", "lightning strike", etc.

In order for #2 to actually encourage broad criteria, there need to exist criteria you could plausibly give that would be met by a sizable fraction of the cards. For example, "I want to find a weapon" would be a useful thing to say only if there are several cards that could theoretically be drawn that would all result in finding weapons. That means that the cards themselves can't be too generic; you'd need to have, say, a "sledgehammer" card, and a separate "swordcane" card, and a separate "rifle" card, and not just a single "appropriate weapon (MC's decision)" card. That suggests that you are going to have a very large number of cards.

In order for #3 to work, though, the number of cards needs to be small enough that you can go through the whole deck (or at least >50%) in a single adventure, and that players can keep track of which things they've seen. Which also means that you're going to see basically every card in basically every adventure. So if one of the cards is "you find a sledgehammer" then you're going to find a sledgehammer in the majority of your adventures.

#3 would also require that you be able to see all the cards that the MC secretly draws for #2, including the ones that aren't selected, since otherwise you can't count them.

So...could you maybe provide some hypothetical examples of what you have in mind?



One idea that might possibly help is that you could have cards divided into several categories, and then you could use a fixed (or at least publicly known) number of cards from each category to form the deck for that game. So, for example, there are 20 different "find a weapon" cards, but you only put 2 of them into the deck for this game; that means there's a lot of weapons you could potentially find, but once you count 2 of them you know that they're used up.

Another idea would be to roll on tables (and probably sub-tables) instead of drawing cards, with one or more "important" entries removed from the table each game (triggering rerolls or defaults or something), so you can pull unlimited "cards" from a very large "deck", but players gradually become more and more confident that anything that's never been rolled is somehow important.

[Murtak]

With most games, you want to group powers by themes and then let characters choose themes. I think with Doubt the exact opposite is the way to go. Characters should select individual powers and only get their theme once they have all the powers for it.

For example, you could allow characters to select one power per chapter, as long as they meet the prerequisites for it. In the first chapter our protagonist gets shot at, allowing him to select the power Dodge Bullets, which he selects and promptly uses. At the beginning of the second chapter he gets locked into the elevator and selects Open Door to get out. In chapter three he does not feel he needs a power, so at the end of it he looks back and decides that getting thrown off a building qualifies for taking Safe Fall. Having taken those three powers it is now clear that his theme is Force Fields, which should probably come with a bonus power or two.

With this setup players get to select their own powers. Those powers will always be useful and always fit into the story. You will always end up with a revelation telling you why your character can do all that weird stuff. But it will only work seamlessly if every combination of X powers (3 in our example) is valid and unique. And the powers have to be quite generic, so you can fit them into many themes, and broadly applicable, so you get a decent selection of powers to choose from.

That is going to take a fair bit of brainstorming and a lot of switching until all combinations are covered, but I think this is a decent setup.

[Username17]

So I really don't think that it's possible or helpful to keep "doubt" in the mind of the players. At least, not without handling the operations in a computer. Even if cards are being drawn or dice are being rolled behind a screen, the player can still see that cards are being fucked with or hear dice being rolled. So they do know that the MC is responding to their ability activations.

In a computer game, I think you could do something pretty interesting with big hidden event tables and unreliable abilities so that the player would genuinely be uncertain that their invocations had any effect whatsoever. And that could be creepy as hell. But in Table Top it just doesn't work. The act of resolving a task inherently makes people aware that a task is being resolved.

---

Anyway, while I've conceded defeat on that score, it does actually free some things up. At its most basic level it means that things can work more like Mage is supposed to work, where the player describes their effect and justifies how it can be construed as "coincidental".

The premise of Doubt, however, allows for that system to work better than it did in nMage or oMage. Because the character can't use any power that cannot be construed as coincidental and they count as their own observer. This instantly cuts through all questions of where hypothetical observers are standing and how long the hypothetical observer's memory goes and all that shit. The hypothetical observer is gone and there are only actual observers - but the character counts as one of the observers and that's that.

This does present possible problems with players wanting to play insane people who have stupid delusions about how things normally work. I am... not sure if that is going to be an actual problem, but the last thing we want is for people to get mechanical benefits for being Fishmalks.

-Username17

[Omegonthesane]

This isn't Apocalypse World, not every failure can be bears. Or fish. Or fishbears. So, logically, a proper fishmalk can't manage too much.

I think the conceit that an observer is always present removes the ability to test the limits of your powers in-character in the cliche superhero movie scene in-character. For the obvious example, someone using Innumeromancy to fiddle their number of bullets or number of $TEXAS notes is clearly on some level observing their actions if they are consciously aware of the number of banknotes or bullets they had when they started the experiment and consciously aware of how many bullets or banknotes they have subtracted from that number.

On a similar tack do you have current specific ideas for the 4-10 spheres of Doubt powers and/or should we dig out the old threads for ideas?

[Username17]

I think the conceit that an observer is always present removes the ability to test the limits of your powers in-character in the cliche superhero movie scene in-character. For the obvious example, someone using Innumeromancy to fiddle their number of bullets or number of $TEXAS notes is clearly on some level observing their actions if they are consciously aware of the number of banknotes or bullets they had when they started the experiment and consciously aware of how many bullets or banknotes they have subtracted from that number.

Yeah, the feedback system of the coincidental requirement with the personal observation means any "controlled test" simply fails. So from that perspective, the character's Doubt should be maintained.

On a similar tack do you have current specific ideas for the 4-10 spheres of Doubt powers and/or should we dig out the old threads for ideas?

Unspecific ideas I'm afraid.

-Username17

[Grek]

Sorry Frank, but even that system doesn't work.

It's a simple mathematical fact that every setup where no finite number of tests will prove beyond a reasonable doubt which spells are effective is also a system where no finite number of tests will give you good reason to think that magic exists at all. If after N tests, you've gone from "Magic doesn't exist" to "Maybe magic exists?", then after 2N tests you will definitionally be as certain of magic existing as you used to be certain of magic not existing. There's no escaping it - either the characters will eventually become convinced that there is magic going on, that they have gone insane, or their powers are too weak to be noticed.

But that is OK. If you accept that, and make it so that the character's self doubt comes from their inability to convince other people that magic exists, rather than their inability to convince themselves, there are no problems. The powers can do whatever you feel like, because the basic source of doubt from the characters is that their perception of events verifiably does not match up with the accounts given by normal people, and normal people will rightfully call them insane if they try to discuss those differences. And, of course, it makes the character's delusions about reality have absolutely no bearing on their magical powers.

[Whatever]

This does present possible problems with players wanting to play insane people who have stupid delusions about how things normally work. I am... not sure if that is going to be an actual problem, but the last thing we want is for people to get mechanical benefits for being Fishmalks.

They don't have to be a fishmalk, though. They can just play as a religious zealot.

[Roog]

Sorry Frank, but even that system doesn't work.

It's a simple mathematical fact that every setup where no finite number of tests will prove beyond a reasonable doubt which spells are effective is also a system where no finite number of tests will give you good reason to think that magic exists at all. If after N tests, you've gone from "Magic doesn't exist" to "Maybe magic exists?", then after 2N tests you will definitionally be as certain of magic existing as you used to be certain of magic not existing.

That assumes that test results are independant of the number of tests performed so far.

[Grek]

Nope, if the success rate for various tests changes over time, that makes it more difficult to pin down what's going on, but no less inevitable.

[Lokathor]

This does present possible problems with players wanting to play insane people who have stupid delusions about how things normally work. I am... not sure if that is going to be an actual problem, but the last thing we want is for people to get mechanical benefits for being Fishmalks.

There's a guy at my work that tried to explain to me once that the reason you can't walk through a closed door is that a door has a consciousness associated with it that will psychically resist your attempt to do so, and when you open a door what you're actually doing is bending the consciousness of the door to convince it to allow you to pass. Of course, he's also admitted that "more logical individuals" have at times diagnosed him with some level of schizophrenia, because that was how they "chose to explain" and come to grips with his "expanded psychic awareness".

Plenty of people in real life already think that they have magical powers, despite not having them. It's very weird to play as characters in an RPG that do have magic powers, and even fight magical threats with those powers, but don't think that they have those magical powers while fighting those magical threats. I think the best route is that, for whatever reason, possibly even for fuzzy magical reasons, the players are simply never ever able to convince sleepers that they have magical powers, despite how much they may try.

[Roog]

If the magical success rate approaches the non-magical sucess rate at an appropriately tuned rate as the number of tests increases, then you can have a situation where you never have sufficent certanty to conclude that magic has or has not effected the success rate since the start of the test.
However, this would mean that at some point you would have sufficient evidence to be certain to an arbitary level that if magic has had an overall effect, the effect has been less than some arbitary threshold.
But a fading effect can increase the time to be sure of anything well beyond the 2N of your example.

In a game, it would be possible to keep the effect below the threshold of proof, by making the ability a sufficently limited non-renewable resouce. Of course that would be a pretty difficult constraint to design the game around.