...and then, satori hit!
Satori (悟り) is a
It was in the shower, but then again a lot of satori seems to involve running water such as rivers, waterfalls, rainstorms, or sitting on the toilet...so I guess the shower is a fairly predictable place for the inspiration to hit.
I've got this design problem, an idiosyncrasy if you will. It's something I do in many of my designs. But at least I know about it, snd I can see when I'm doing it. If I take some of my last few game designs into consideration, I can see where I've been doing it. Yet it's only in retrospect that I recognise that I've been following the same problematic path.
Designing anything is like playing a game of Go.
At first the board is open, so is the design. There is a massive variety of first moves, and some people have specific strategic choices that influence the way the rest of their effort will go.
Things start easy but once the first moves have been played, optimal strategies arise from the moves and layout if the board.
From a game design perspective those first moves might be a choice of genre, what dice to use (if they are used at all), deciding the underlying themes of the game... whether it promotes storytelling, competitiveness, or immersion.
Further moves build the strategy, refine it into something specific, then reveal whether that strategy successfully accomplishes what it set out to do.
Many of my recent designs have started with a strong vision, but get caught up on an issue that I overanalyse and end up losing momentum on. I can see where I wanted to go, but I overcomplcate stuff, or deviate from the original concept in some way that ends up with me finding more issues than solutions.
I wasn't entirely happy with the way The Law ended up resolving it's design issues. I was trying to get them sorted with the evolution of that game, Familiar, but there were certain bits that still just didn't feel like elegant or intuitive solutions.
In both those systems, an Otherkind dice method is used. Players roll a minimum of two dice, an attribute die that links to the general type of activity being undertaken (physical, social, mental, or supernatural), and a power die that represents the overall experience level of the character (in The Law this reflects the character's rank among the law enforcement agency, while in Familiar it reflects their focused magical potential). In both games there may be more dice rolled, with an optional die for situational advantage, another optional die for equipment, possibly one for assistance from an ally, and one for magical influence on the events at hand. You pick the best two dice from all the dice rolled, then allocate them between success (indicating how well you did) and sacrifice (indicating what you gave up in the attempt). All skills fit into one of the attribute types, and if you've got a skill relating to the task at hand (and rolling the relevant attribute), you may increase the success or sacrifice result by one degree (thus increasing the potential success, or reducing the potential sacrifice).
Success result degrees
1: No success, and the opportunity to try again has passed.
2-3: No success, but you can try again
4-5: Minor success. You get the minimum expected result
6-7: Moderate success. You get a decent result, perhaps a little better than expected
8+: Major success: You get the best result possible
Sacrifice result degrees
1: Major sacrifice. You give up a lot in the attempt to complete this action
2-3: Moderate sacrifice. You give up a reasonable amount
4-5: Minor sacrifice. You give up something fairly negligible to make this attempt
6+: No sacrifice.
With a step die system for the attributes and power dice, (d4 = low, d6 = average, d8 = above average, d10 = great, d12 = exceptional), a roll of 4 is always possible, no matter how poor your abilities are there's still a chance you'll get a minor success on an action. But when you get to the top end of the scale, a d12 means a 2/3 chance of success, and a 1/3 chance of a major success (or a 50% chance of not sacrificing anything). When a skill increases the result, if has a big impact on a d4, but a minor impact on a d12.
I toyed with the idea of having "10+ (but only if you use a skill)" which would equate to a legendary action result. A die of d8 would have a 12.5% (1 in 8) chance of reaching that level of success if the character possessed a relevant skill, a d10+skill would have a 30% (3 in 10) chance, and a d12+skill would have a 41.666% chance. It sort of works but feels like design by exception, and I don't like design by exception. D&D is filled with design by exception and that means it's filled with loopholes to be exploited and pages and pages of details that are only really useful to a limited demographic within the game.
I tried something different with my two recent games "Shattered City" and "Shattered Heroes", neither of which are available (for reasons I might be allowed to disclose some time soon). This system used a modified FU system (1 = no, but, 2 = no, 3 = no, and, 4 = yes, but, 5 = yes, 6 = yes, and), a single die result rather than the Otherkind style. Skills and advantages give you bonus dice, difficulties and problems give you penalty dice. Bonus dice and penalty dice cancel each other out. So you might roll multiple dice and pick the worst result if things are going against you, or roll multiple dice and pick the best result if things are going your way. Four or more penalty dice meant an action automatically failed, while four or more bonus dice give an automatic success. The way I overcomplicated things here was by varying the skills, some giving bonuses to actions, others giving resistances, and some giving special benefits. Different types of characters had one of each.
That's where my problem lies... in both systems skills exist separate from the other benefits that might apply to a task result, and in both systems things get complicated.
My moment of satori came with rethinking what skills are, and therefore how they should impact the other mechanisms in the system.
In most games, skills are stand-alone things. Maybe it's a case of "You have it or you don't" or maybe it's a case of you can be good at this skill or bad at it (and you get a different percentage, or a different skill modifier depending on how good you are). However, what would happen if skills were just fragments of an overall ability continuum and you could piece them together in different ways to get a range of benefits.
Erin Gumiho and I have been exchanging ideas lately. She took the idea of rolling a step die and comparing it to multiples of 4, instead of the multiples of 2 that I used in The Law and Familiar...in her system each multiple of 4 counts as a full success. Difficulty factors reduce the step die by a level, and if it drops below d4 the task becomes impossible to achieve... bonuses increase the step die by a level, and if it increases beyond d12 the task is automatically successful, with a d12 rolled to see what other successes might be achieved. It sort of combines ideas from the "Shattered" games with the other game ideas I've toyed with. She should be ready to release "Mana Crusade" soon, I'm just putting together some layout work for it.
But the moment of Satori comes with re-evolving these ideas. If she's going to take some concepts and change them, then I'm going to take those changed ideas and re-integrate them into the system I've been struggling to make sense of...
...here's the basics.
There's a list of 40-odd ability aspects, either you've got one or not. I'm sticking with "A"-words for consistency here, so bear with me...
Every time you perform a skill, you're rolling an Attribute die which reflects your raw potential in one of the four categories (physical, social, mental, supernatural). You also roll your Awareness die which reflects your underlying power and connection to the universe. Then you add your advantage dice due to the situation, your equipment, or your allies. This all fits the same as it did before...the difference is in the Ability die which is a new way to address how abilities work.
In Erin's "Mana Crusade", things are rated from d4 (1 star) to d12 (5 stars) and as I said earlier, if things drop below d4 (1 star) they can't be attempted, while if they go above d12 (5 stars) they automatically succeed. In a lot of cases, skills can be used to increase the step die (rather than improving the result like I had done in previous games). So my new idea it to take those incremental skill bonuses, and rather than adding them to another die, they form a die of their own. Following the "Mana Crusade" idea, this reverses it and each ability is a star... if one ability fragment applies to a situation (1 star), the character gains a bonus d4...if two ability fragments apply (2 stars), the character gains a bonus d6... three ability fragments (3 stars) becomes a d8... etc. The final ability die is simply rolled with the Attribute and Awareness dice. Actions can have variable risk associated with them (you start with more or less sacrifices that need to be overcome), and variable difficulty associated with them (you may have some of your successes absorbed by the difficulty factor if it's hard).
This whole system makes the tasks of opposing characters easily resolved too, because both sides are just rolling the same dice the same way...
...I think this could work.
...and I think Walkabout might be ready to go again.
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