Mister Monster's Workshop

Tag: ttrpg

  • The Challenge System

    The Challenge System

    I didn’t really do much this week, so let’s talk about something I’ve had almost finished for years now: the resolution system for my great work-in-progress, Monstrous Mishaps. I call it the Challenge System, for lack of a better name.

    The thing that stands out with the Challenge System is that it’s entirely free from randomisers – not just “diceless” (a term people keep applying to games that rely on alternate randomisers, like card draws or coin flips, to my constant annoyance) but completely deterministic, with no randomness except the GM’s whimsy and the players’ refusal to stick to the plot. Because let’s be honest, those two are more than enough!

    The Challenge System gives each character a set of Abilities, twelve Primary Abilities that are bought and raised individually, and twelve Derived Abilities that are each calculated as the average between two Primary Abilities. For example, your Score in Bullshitting (telling lies) is the average between your Score in Schmoozing (charm and charisma) and your Score in Mindgames (psychology).

    Each Ability has a Score that usually goes from 1 to 15. The Score translates into a Level, as such:

    Score 1: Minimal Level, the sort of thing anyone can do just by being a healthy adult.

    Score 2-3: Limited Level, the equivalent of a natural talent or passing interest.

    Score 4-7: Basic Level, the equivalent of professional skill; the I-do-this-for-a-living sort of competence.

    Score 8-15: Advanced Level, the peak of consistent human performance.

    There are three more Levels: Heroic (Score 16-31, anything Batman could do), Epic (Score 32-63, anything Superman could do), and Godlike (Score 64+, anything no one could possibly do), but Player Characters can’t have those in their Abilities. So why do I bring them up? Stay tuned, I’ll get to it.

    When the players try to do something, the GM assigns it a Challenge Score (and associated Challenge Level) equal to the Ability Score it would reasonably take to accomplish it. So anything a seasoned professional might do within an Ability would be a Basic Challenge for that Ability. Advantages come in categories of +1, +3, +5, +10 and so on. They matter the most in Contests (where one character matches one of their Abilities against one of another character’s) since for regular Challenges you can just set the Challenge Score to anything you want to start with.

    Finally, you can apply Upshifts and Downshifts. Those can come from any source that dramatically change the parameters of the Challenge, such as drastically extending or shortening the time the character has to work in, but the most common source of Upshifts is from paying Grit Points (of which a character has a fixed amounts). Paying 1 Grit Points gives one Upshift, while paying 3 Grit Points gives two Upshifts. An Upshift multiplies the Ability Score (after adding Advantages) by 2, and thus also increasing the Ability Level by one step. Downshifts do the same to Challenge Scores.

    If, after all this, the Ability Score is equal to or higher than the Challenge Score, the character succeeded. Otherwise they failed.

    I’ve playtested the system extensively, and it’s actually really smooth once you get used to it. When it comes right down to it, it’s just about deciding whether it would make sense for a character to succeed at something. And it’s nice, sometimes, to always get a result that fits the scene, instead of having come up with ways to justify the swinginess that comes from die rolls.

  • Starlight Dreams

    Starlight Dreams

    So this week I actually ended up working on an original game, just not the one I meant to work on. Oh well.

    The game in question has the working name Auturge, though I have never been entirely satisfied with it – other ones I’ve toyed with are Self-Created or Ex Nihilo, and right now I am leaning towards Starlight Dreams. By any name, it’s about being a genderless self-created god (your pronouns are yt/yts, and someone please shoot me for uttering that sentence) in a young and innocent cosmos called the Sublime that is under attack by evil Nazi goblins called the Sordid. You battle faceless hordes of enemies, treacherous ex-allies, and creations gone bad.

    I guess the game is what you might call an affectionate parody. It came about after I had read one too many threads at the Something Awful forums where people were screeching about every game being deeply problematic because it had sexual themes, or because it wasn’t high-powered enough, or because it depicted the bad guys as anything short of completely irredeemably evil. I started sarcastically planning out the sort of game that these perpetually offended people would actually want… and then, after I got into it, I realised that what I’d come up with actually sounded like a lot of fun.

    So basically, it’s a game that makes fun of wokeness, but it’s also a game that revels in wokeness, that takes its worst excesses and runs with them. That might make it a game that pleases absolutely no one, but it’s one that thoroughly captured my imagination. And I’ll say for it, there is very little on the market like it.

    I’ve previously written up a playtesting version, but then I put it away to consider it. This week, I started writing up the basic rules from scratch again. So far, this is what I have. The next thing I need to work out is Miracles, the way that players can make things happen through sheer divine will rather than just superheroic action.

    CHARACTER CREATION

    When creating a character, first choose your Virtues. The four Virtues are Outrage (used for aggressive and forceful action and zeal), Nurture (used to care for and empathise with others), Elegance (used to perform nimble feats and eloquent rhetoric) and Self-Love (used to protect yourself and be mindful of your surroundings). You start with two of them at 1, a third at 2, and the last at 3.

    Choose your Identity:

    • Ganesha, a god of animals and the flesh. Increase any one Virtue by 1 and start with the Harmony of the Body.
    • Mimer, a god of thought and ideal. Increase Elegance by 1 and start with the Harmony of the Abstract.
    • Persephone, a god of plant life and mysticism. Increase Nurture by 1 and start with the Harmony of Growth.
    • Raiden, a god of natural forces. Increase Outrage by 1 and start with the Harmony of Forces.
    • Terra, a god of the inanimate. Increase Self-Love by 1 and start with the Harmony of the Inanimate.

    Choose your Calling:

    • Creatrix, a maker of beauty. Increase Elegance by 1.
    • Kindness, a gentle carer for those who suffer. Increase Nurture by 1.
    • Mourner, one of who remembers what has been lost. Increase Self-Love by 1.
    • Strident, a warrior for justice. Increase Outrage by 1.
    • Wisdom, an arbiter of disputes. Increase any Virtue by 1.

    TASK RESOLUTION

    When performing an action that might conceivably fail, a player must build a dice pool.

    1) The player picks up 5 Hope Dice (green).
    2) The player replaces as many Hope Dice with Faith Dice (yellow) as they have points in the relevant Virtue.
    3) For every established Fancy the player invokes by describing how it aids their action, they may replace a Hope Die with a Faith Die or a Faith Die with a Love Die (red).
    4) For every point of the relevant sort of Esteem the player spends on the roll, they may replace a Hope Die with a Faith Die or a Faith Die with a Love Die.
    5) For every established Fancy the Guide invokes by describing how it hinders the action, the Guide may replace one Love Die with a Faith Die or one Faith Die with a Hope Die.
    6) The player rolls the dice. Count one success for every Hope Die that shows a 6, one success for every Faith Die that shows a result of 4+, and one success for every Love Die that shows a result of 2+. The total number of successes is the Result.

    The Guide compares the Result with the task’s Difficulty. Difficulty is set as follows:

    • Difficulty 0: anything a regular human being could reasonably do. This does not even require a roll.
    • Difficulty 1: the absolute peak of mortal effort; a once-in-a-million achievement.
    • Difficulty 2: something that could be done by an animal of the right type (e.g., staying under water indefinitely, flying to the opposite side of a mountain).
    • Difficulty 3: something that could be accomplished by means of a handheld modern implement or tool.
    • Difficulty 4: something that could be accomplished by an advanced human civilisation. Note that this is rarely instantaneous.
    • Difficulty 5: something that absolutely couldn’t be done without magic or divine intervention; effectively, this allows the player to perform a Miracle without needing either to spend Esteem or to possess the right Harmonies.

    If the Result equals or exceeds the Difficulty, the action succeeds and the player gains Esteem of the appropriate form equal to the Difficulty. Acts of Outrage generate Righteousness Esteem, acts of Nurture generate Charity Esteem, acts of Elegance generate Beauty Esteem and acts of Self-Love generate Serenity Esteem.

    If the Result is lower than the Difficulty, the action fails, and there is some kind of consequence. The consequence is never simply that nothing happens, the situation always deteriorates in some way.

    When opposing another self-moving entity (another auturge, demiurge, sordite, Whim, Wicked, Urge, or Gloom) the Difficulty for the action is the entity’s relevant Virtue. Thus, taking cover from sordite’s laser beam is an Elegance roll against the sordite’s Outrage, seeing through the lies of a Gloom is a Nurture roll against the Gloom’s Elegance, and resisting an Urge’s poisonous bile is a Self-Love roll against the Urge’s Outrage.

    FANCIES

    Fancies are facts of the immediate situation that have been established. “The golden palace shines with a blinding light” is a Fancy, as is “we stand on rocks floating in the middle of an endless void,” and “the Crustacean Sultan is greatly wroth.” When a player attempts an action, both the player and the Guide may describe how some number of Fancies help (for the player) or hinder (for the Guide) the action. This is called invoking a Fancy. A Fancy can only be invoked once for a given action. This also means that if a player has invoked a Fancy to help the action, the Guide may not invoke the same Fancy to hinder the action.

    The Guide can introduce Fancies at any time by describing them, either as an introduction to a scene, because something changed in it, or just because the players noticed something for the first time. The Guide can also alter or remove Fancies at will, in accordance to what makes sense in terms of the changing situation. Fancies arise from what is happening within the game world, not the other way around.

    The players can create, alter or remove Fancies by taking actions that change the situation. The Difficulty is set as normal, depending on how difficult the Guide judges it to be. If the action is successful, the local Fancies change accordingly. Failing a roll may also affect Fancies, just not in the way that the player intended.

    Some Fancies are Passing Fancies, which disappear once they are invoked. Such Fancies usually describe some temporary advantage or setback that can easily change. For example, the Fancy “the Emerald Giant is distracted by Xia’s song” disappears once one of Xia’s friends invoke it to strike the Emerald Giant in the back – after that, yts attention is definitely no longer on Xia’s song! While the Guide can always create, remove or change a Fancy for any reason at all, declaring a Fancy to be a Passing one is mostly just a way to remind everyone not to get used to it. Fancies that aren’t Passing Fancies are Persistent Fancies, and can be invoked any number of times. If nothing else is mentioned, assume that a Fancy is a Persistent Fancy.

  • Mummy downtime

    Mummy downtime

    Okay. Okay. I admit it. I have to change the downtime rules in my Mummy: the Resurrection port. I still think the idea behind them is sound – they’re mechanics for when the party settles in for a few days to learn new spells, do surveillance, work on projects, whatever.

    The problem is that the PbtA gameplay loop makes it very hard to create a natural time to take a few days off. PbtA encourages you to keep throwing stuff at the players, to prevent those endless, boring moments when the plot can’t progress because the players are failing to do X, Y or Z that would lead to the next setpiece. In PbtA, if the players just sit around doing nothing, then the GM springs a GM move on them that forces them to take some kind of action. That’s a good thing – in fact, it’s a great thing. But it does mean that the action never really comes to a natural halt. The players never want to stop for several days, because there’s always something they need to deal with today.

    Still, I think most of this can be solved by making downtime represent, say, half an hour instead of several days; not enough time for the shit to really hit the fan for lack of player attention. While I’m at it, I might as well make it so that rituals must be cast as downtime moves; that ties the two paces of the game into the magic system neatly. It does mean that mummies now heal downright scarily fast, but fine, fine – they can literally reconstitute themselves from a single speck of ash when resurrecting, it isn’t too far-fetched that they heal pretty fast the rest of the time too, just not to the point of wounds closing instantly the way they do for werewolves.

    It still bugs me, though. Shouldn’t there be some way to make characters take breaks, even in PbtA? Dungeon World has “making camp” rules, I’m not sure why that works – yes, it’s an inherent part of standard fantasy, but urban fantasy (especially the sort that involves caster types) surely has “time to run to the library and look stuff up!” as an equally natural ingredient. So why do players never want to do that?

    Oh well.

    I’ve also started sketching on a Pendragon port. Which is also going to have downtime moves, because that’s a big part of the game. If I can’t figure out a way to get the players to return to their manors for the winter there, it may just be hopeless… Anyway, my starting point is to use the thirteen Trait pairs – Energetic/Lazy, Valorous/Cowardly, Trusting/Suspicious, etc – as the basis for all moves, making what sort of person you are matter more than your training (which will be more or less the same for all characters, after all – they’re all knights!). I’ll get back to you with any developments.