Storifying Mage: The Ascension (Part 2) - Starting with the Character Sheet
The first fundamental in my design project has stated that I
wish to to keep the existing character sheet. When rebuilding a system from the
ground up, this may seem like a pretty controversial move, but in light of my
last fundamental (remain generally compatible with existing Mage sourcebooks)
it makes sense not to deviate to far from the established system of
attributes/abilities/spheres/advantages.
Sure, I could have drawn my basic inspiration from the
stripped back game system used in the Mind’s Eye Theatre version of the
product, but that game is designed for political intrigue between mages, not
about urban fantasy adventuring in a dark world where belief is your primary
weapon. Besides, if I used the Mind’s Eye Theatre version of the rules, that
would render most of the sourcebooks obsolete.
So, let’s look at the commonly available character sheet for
the game…
That’s the standard 1 page sheet, similar to most Classic
World of Darkness games.
It doesn’t say you need to roll d10s (even though the game
does), nor does it say that you need to combine an attribute and an ability to
make a roll (even though you do this when you normally play the game). Based on
this alone, you could easily play the game with d6s. But many of the
sourcebooks refer to different effects with different difficulties on a scale
of 1 to 10, or having the active player add together an attribute and ability
to form a dice pool, while the defending/passive player adds together an
attribute and ability to determine a difficulty for the roll (or maybe to 1-10
willpower scale is used, or maybe a flat number standard difficulty for some
tasks).
There’s a range of 33 abilities, 11 each in Talents, Skills
and Knowledges. This character sheet doesn’t include room for secondary
abilities, which are less common quirky actions that some characters specialise
in. In fact, there’s a lot of stuff that this character sheet doesn’t have,
it’s basically the most common numbers you need, it doesn’t really say a lot
about the character as a person at all.
Let’s switch to the version available from one of the prime
repositories of character sheets on the internet, Mr. Gone…
This particular one is clearly for 3rd/revised edition mage. It includes resonance, which was a far more vague concept in earlier iterations of the game. It includes an “other traits” section, multiple times, and expanded backgrounds (which is really good when we’re looking to make these features more prominent in the game). But with this character sheet, there is still plenty of room to play with mechanisms. We need a good core that allows players to drive the story with the facilitation of the Storyteller.
One of the constant problems in the Classic World of
Darkness was the idea that if you faced something with a difficulty of 10, then
having more dice wasn’t actually an advantage. A 1 always counted as a botch,
so a difficulty of 10 meant that every die had an equal chance of succeeding or
botching. At least with a difficulty of 9, every die had twice as much chance
of succeeding as it did botching, and at lower ends of the scale you had the
chance that every die might end up with a success, and you might have seven or
eight successes (while in most cases 5 successes is considered phenomenal).
Things go weird at the edges in Classic World of Darkness (CWoD).
So we could basically play the whole game with 2d10 used for
every action if we really wanted to, and it wouldn’t screw up the system much
more than the issues already inherent. Here’s what I’m thinking, it’s basically
the old Cyberpunk 2020 system (sort of)… Attribute + Ability + 1d10 vs
Difficulty (on scale of 1-10, or made from opponent’s Attribute + Ability) +
1d10. Acting character wins on ties.
If you’ve normally got an attribute + ability score of 1 (in
other words you’ve got a crappy attribute and you don’t have any proficiency
with the task you’re attempting), and are confronting something with a difficulty
of 10 (the most difficult thing a human could feasibly attempt); in this system
you’d need to roll a 10, and the GM would need to roll a 1 before a success is
achieved (that’s a 1 in 100 chance of success). Arguably a 1% chance of success
is more realistic than a 10% chance of success in the regular Classic World of
Darkness Storyteller System.
If you’ve got an attribute + ability score of 2 (in other
words an average attribute and no proficiency, or a rubbish attribute and some
basic proficiency), and are attempting the difficulty 10 task, the CWoD system
gives you a 19% chance of rolling at least one 10, but it also gives a 19%
chance of rolling at least one 1. Under the variant I‘m initially proposing,
you’re looking at a 3% chance of success because…if the player rolls a 10, the
GM could roll a 1 or 2 and a success would be granted, and if the player rolls
a 9, the GM could roll a 1 and success would still occur. As you get to the
middle ranges (attribute + ability = 5, vs difficulty 5), the proposed system
generates success 50% of the time (the player just needs to roll higher than
the GM).
That’s where things get wonky. A difficulty 6 is considered
average in CWoD, a die has a 50% chance of rolling 6 or higher and thus gaining
a success. A few elements of the game are based around this. Luckily I’m not
quite finished.
I remember reading somewhere (years ago) that a player
enjoys a game when they’ve got roughly a 75% chance of succeeding on common
actions, roughly a 25% chance of succeeding on hard actions, and suitably less
chance of succeeding on even tougher actions. Players like to feel that their
characters are good at something (and can generally sweat the small stuff with
no problems). At the time Mage was released, the big thing in gaming was “Rule
Zero” (Feel free to change anything in these rules), it was something most
people did anyway, but I remember it being something new and exciting to see it
actually printed in the text of the book. In the years since Mage was released,
the concept of “Say Yes, or roll the dice” came along (in “Dogs in the
Vineyard” if I remember correctly), and many games have since adopted this
principle. Again, it’s something that a lot of us had been doing for years
before it was specifically printed in a book. Now we’re seeing things like
“only roll dice if there is a risk or if the random chance drives the story in
some way”. It’s all basically the stuff I’m trying to achieve with this
project. I want die rolls that give interesting results, not just whether the
character failed or did good (and how good), but also whether any unusual side
effects occurred.
I want to add in the idea of “and” results which add a bonus
effect to the result, and ”but” results which detract something (or add a
penalty effect). For Mage this is great…
...a magical effect “and” it ripples into another beneficial
side-effect, a magical effect “but” it causes extra paradox…
…a combat hit “and” it causes bleeding or hobbles the
victims movement, a combat hit “but” it breaks your weapon…
…a negotiation “and” you know have a sidekick for the rest
of the scene, a negotiation “but” they’ll never deal with you again…
This might need some kind of cheat sheet containing a few
sample “and” and “but” results that might be appropriate in activities relating
to different attributes, as well as a few generic “and” and “but” results that
could be appropriate in a range of situations. But how do we get those results?
That’s where I’m looking at the ideas of +Kyrinn S. Eis, and
her “Yes & No + Unexpected” system (and some of the ideas I had when I
discussed it with her), as well as Otherkind/Ghost/Echo ideas, which basically
means I’m vaguely linking it back across to FUBAR (because I know it works).
Every conflict roll uses 3 dice, two white, one black. Let’s
call the white ones “good” dice, and the black one becomes the “bad” die. The good
dice determine the character’s actions to complete the goal (choose one and add
it to the attribute + ability total), the bad die determines the resistance to
those actions (add it to the opposing difficulty, or victim’s attribute +
ability total). Choosing the better of 2 ten sided dice to beat another ten
sided dice gives a closer result to 75% success on those “average” actions.
What about that other white die? We could just ignore it,
but that feels like a waste of potential. We also need something that will
generate the “and” and “but” results, so why not mesh those two fragments
together? How often do we want these “and” and “but” results? All the time? Half
the time? Occasionally? Rarely?
We could get the effect all the time if we say the discarded
die generates an “and” result if it’s even and a “but” result if it’s odd. We
could get the result occasionally if we say that either of the white dice produces
a 1, it generates a “but” result and if either white die produces a 10 it generates
an ”and” result. I think we need more conscious choice in the matter, so that a
player can choose between a good result that has a “but” aspect to it, or a barely
adequate result with an “and” aspect that makes it more interesting for the
story.
Needs more thought.
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