On a scale from one to ten, how well does this all play out?
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| Sterling Hundley - Sleeping Prophet |
For Prismatic Wasteland's 'make a resolution system' challenge. This is the current state of a mechanic I've been circling around for a while. I started working on this in January, but only managed to finish it now.
I'm breaking this post into three parts--a quick summary of the system, a discussion of the design constraints I'm giving myself while designing a core resolution system, and then a more in depth look at the system and how it's meant to be used. The meat of the post is probably that middle segment--this whole challenge is really an excuse for me to think through all the subtle jobs that a good mechanic needs to fill.
The System
The core of the system sits close the core of all dice-rolling: when something happens with an unsure outcome you roll a d10--on a 1, the worst reasonable outcome happens. On a 10, the best reasonable outcome happens. On a 5, about what you'd expect happens, and so on.
Or, to restate it with a little more detail: Characters have a list of skills, each rated from 0-5. Whenever a player attempts an action where result is unclear, the GM may tell them to roll for outcome, declaring which skill is relevant. The player rolls a number of d10 equal to their character's skill rating--the result of the roll is the highest rolled number. If they have 0 in a skill, they roll two dice and take the lowest result. They then tell the result to the GM who uses that number to decide on the action's outcome--the higher the number the more favorable the outcome.
What Makes For A Good System?
Okay, so what's the significance of this system? How did I come to it? What am I trying to accomplish with it?
To answer this, let's talk a bit about what resolution systems do in a RPG. There's a whole bunch of functions they need to perform in play, and a whole bunch of pitfalls they need to avoid. Let's look at the design constraints I'm thinking about when I work on a system, noting systems that succeed or fail at these functions in notable ways.
Obviously different designers and players are going to value different of constraints to different degrees (and some may even disagree with them entirely). Pretty much every constraint on the list is in direct conflict with at least a few of the others; system design is an art of trade-offs, not something where you can ever hope to find the one ultimate design that fits all constraints perfectly.
I'm strongly influenced by the claim in Goblin Punch's post on base resolution mechanics (https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2023/03/critical-glog-base-resolution-mechanics.html) that resolution mechanics tend to just be fancy ways of generating a % chance of a pass/fail result. That whole post in general is solid foundation to how I'm thinking about systems.
Anyway, a good system should. . .
Draw A Distinction ⅂
This is the core job a resolution system fills--it draws a distinction between actions that succeed as intended and ones that go wrong in some way. This one's pretty straightforward: the system should have a way of declaring success/failure on an action.
Example: In D&D 5e you roll a d20+skill bonus against a difficulty set by the DM. If you hit or beat the difficulty, you succeed. Otherwise you fail.
Be Easy To Teach
This one's also a bit of a no-brainer--a good system is one that's quick and easy to teach to new players. It's also one of the more painful constraints; every additional mechanic you add to a system makes it more complex and more obnoxious to learn, so you have to be extremely stingy with the number of additional mechanics you tack onto a game.
Example: Lasers & Feelings fits its rules entirely on one page. It's simple enough you can run a one-shot and teach the game's rules without meaningfully cutting into your play-time.
Have A Non-Fussy Process
A game's core resolution method is going to be done over and over and over again, so it should feel good and be quick to do. Even a tiny bit of friction here is going to generate outsized problems, simply because it'll be popping up constantly throughout play. No part of the core mechanic should feel annoying.
Example: THAC0 in older D&D editions forces players to perform subtraction in their heads, which has worse brain-feel than addition.
Example: Exalted regularly has you throw a dozen+ dice and then hunt through them to count successes, taking a non-trivial amount of time and slowing down play. However, throwing a giant fist full of dice also feels pleasurable.
Allow For Quick Rolls
Sometimes moments crop up in play where you want to generate some uncertainty in outcome, but you also don't want to slow down play that much. You should be able to call for, perform, and interpret a roll quick enough that it doesn't meaningfully interrupt the flow of conversation.
Example: Setting position and effect for every roll in Blades in the Dark gives a slightly elevated floor on minimum roll speed, but also lets the GM preview possible consequences very concisely.
Example: In any system that lets players write their own skills, a step gets added where the player needs to ask the GM if the skill they want to use is applicable, turning a three-step (call for, roll, interpret) process into a five-step one (call for, propose skill, approve skill, roll, interpret).
Support Negotiation
A lot of the fun in RPGs comes from the players jockeying for advantages. For more consequential rolls, the player should be able to have a back and forth with the GM where they can come up with clever plans, expend resources, make arguments, and so on in order to improve their odds. This is a dynamic pretty core to RPGs, so most systems have this unless they actively move to restrict it.
Example: PbtA moves have strict rules on what dice to rolls and constrained lists of possible outcomes, limiting the amount of jockeying players can do (although there's still room for that in arguing which move applies and on hard move outcomes).
Example: The D&D 5e advantage system is a quick way to reward good player positioning in a situation (although it being an all-or-nothing bonus can be slightly limiting).
Create Hype-Moments
The outcome of a check should sometimes produce memorable moments. The dice should occasionally (but not constantly) derail expectations and force a re-evaluation of the situation as something wild happens.
Example: Rolling a natural 20 (or natural 1) in D&D on an important check.
Have Transparent Outcomes
The player should have a reasonable idea of what's at stake when they roll, both in terms of mechanics and within the fiction.
Example: In old World of Darkness dice pool games, it was pretty painful trying to calculate probabilities on the fly. What are the odds that 6d10 generate at least two successes with a difficulty of 7?
Example: Blades in the Dark's position and effect mechanics are amazing at letting the GM communicate narrative consequences and outcomes quickly and without needing to pause play to think up exact consequences pre-roll.
Support Non-Binary Outcomes
Aka partial successes. Can the system generate outcomes that aren't pure success or pure failure? Doing this well feels like a little bit of a white whale for RPG designers (see Don't Be Creatively Exhausting).
Example: PbtA, BitD, and lots of storygame systems all have partial success systems baked into their core systems.
Example: Sometimes in D&D 5e the DM forgets to set a DC and then the player rolls middling and then the DM narrates a result that's effectively a partial success.
Encourage Creativity
This is tightly related to the above entry, but a good system should encourage creativity and the creation of unexpected outcomes in play. Open-ended abilities for the players, creative prompts, unexpected results, etc.
Example: Partial success systems all do this--a partial success is basically always more interesting than a pure success or a pure failure. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. . .
Example: The Quiet Year explicitly hits players with writing prompt questions they need to answer through play.
Example: Rolling on random tables can inject unexpected twists in gameplay, taking the session in directions not anticipated by the GM or players.
Don't Be Creatively Exhausting
This is what makes partial successes so hard to pull off well. Success and failure are usually effortless to visualize, but if the system is constantly forcing the GM to come up with semi-successes it can get draining surprisingly quickly. Similarly, any system that gives big creative prompts without much structure can be overwhelming if that's not exactly what you're there for.
Example: The core mechanic of Fiasco is just "tell a story", which would be a bit exhausting if it didn't go so hard in giving you prompts and relationships before the game started to build off of.
Example: PbtA games have strictly listed possible outcomes to moves that are picked from, massively cutting down the drain of adjudicating results.
Example: The fact that BitD sets position and effect from a list prevents the need for GMs to be creative before the roll, but the fact that partial success is the most common outcome of a roll can definitely lead to some fatigue.
Have Non-Intimidating Character Creation
This is a subset of the game being easy to learn, but you should be able to make a character for the system quickly if you want to be able to have pick up play.
Example: D&D 5e effectively requires characters to be made at home and/or holding a session zero to work. There are a ton of character options, characters have builds that can be pre-planned-out, and there's a generally large amount of bookkeeping/derived stats/etc to jot down before you can play.
Example: I've lost enough characters in B/X D&D I can probably roll up a new character in sub-5-minutes at this point. Roll stats, pick a class, starting gear, maybe roll some spells, come up with a dumb joke name you'll regret later, and you're done.
Subtly Teach Play Procedures
As a player looks at a rules summary, or more commonly their character sheet, it should ground them in what play will actually look like. Skills are probably the most common form of this--my hot take is that skills have an overall negative effect on actual play (they tend to turn characters into minmaxed hammers in search of nails), but that they're so useful at presenting the expectations of play that they're still generally worth it.
Example: Skill lists in D&D 5e, Blades in the Dark, etc give a pretty good preview of the types of situations that crop up in play. If you don't know what to do at any given moment, you can always look at your skill list as a list of possible verbs to try out.
Example: Your torch going out as an entry on an overloaded encounter die makes it clear you'll be going into dark places where light sources are important.
Give Play Prompts
A player, especially a new player, should be given some roleplay prompts to lean on as they get comfortable filling out their character in play.
Example: Rolling for stats creates the framework for a story the player has to respond to. Figuring out what someone with 16 INT and 4 WIS is a fun starting point for goofy roleplaying, especially if you'd never allocate stats like that by hand.
Example: PbtA playbook details you choose from (name, appearance, etc) are great for starting to get a player thinking about their character.
Example: Into the Odd's starting item kits tend to have a lot of personality, which is important because the rest of the game is streamlined enough that it doesn't help much visualizing your character as a character. Electric Bastionland jobs also do a good job of getting players started.
Cultivate Desire To Play
This may be wandering out of 'core resolution mechanic' territory, but a system should solicit desire to play as it teaches itself/as players create characters. One reason character special abilities, crunchy rules, derived stats, tons of options, and so on are all so common is that they get players hyped to try the game--you see the mechanic and you fantasize about using it.
Example: Devising charop builds in D&D 3.5 required significant scholarship, with books and books of options to pour over for game breaking build combos. You could spend days lost inside the game without ever actually playing it.
Example: When you make an elf in B/X D&D you get a randomly rolled spell you start knowing, and immediately you can start fantasizing about how you might use it in the upcoming session.
Cultivate Desire To Keep Playing
Similar to the above, but for after the first session is over. A non-one-shot game should give players something to fantasize about achieving in the future. A lot of that comes from the game's premise/narrative, but ideally the system should help as well.
Example: A wizard in D&D sees 'Fireball' in the list of 3rd tier spells and fantasizes about reaching level 5.
Example: A player whose character's 'build' really comes together at level 7 will fantasize about reaching level 7.
Not Fall Apart Over Time
This is often in painful opposition to the above, but a good system shouldn't get less fun as player characters progress mechanically. If the game feels different as you level or or achieve your goals, it should probably feel different in a good way.
Example: D&D has basically always gotten less fun as you pass level 10 or so.
Break Functionally
Players are going to play differently that RAW, sometimes by mistake and sometimes by design. The game should still be fun when that happens.
Example: When the Adventure Zone played BitD I think they just completely stopped using injury penalties altogether. I couldn't tell if they just forgot or if they thought it was too punishing otherwise.
Example: Torchbearer is a beautiful rube goldberg device of a game, but it feels like if you run even a single rule wrong the whole machine will collapse and send the party into a death spiral.
In Depth Scale Dice Description
Now that we've gone over what qualities I find important in a system I'm designing, let's take another look at the Scale Dice resolution system and ways you can use it. I'll restate it, with a little more detail this time.
Character Creation
When a player creates a character they do a few steps not relevant to this post (pick a class, etc), then eventually come to picking their skills. There are three skill categories, each of which have five skills:
Skill: Research, Stealth, Tinkering, Medicine
Body: Strength, Finesse, Footwork, Endurance
Instinct: Perception, Presence, Empathy, Willpower
Skills are ranked in level from 0 to 5.
The player picks one category to be their good one, and marks all associated skills at level 2. They then pick one category to be their average one, and mark all associated skills at level 1. The remaining category is their bad one, with all skills starting at level 0.
The player may then distribute another 4 levels among any skills they choose.
Player-Facing Resolution
When a player attempts an action where result is unclear, the GM may tell them to roll for outcome, declaring which skill is relevant. The player rolls a number of d10 equal to their character's skill rating--the result of the roll is the highest rolled number. If they have 0 in a skill, they roll two dice and take the lowest result. They then tell the result to the GM who uses that number to decide on the action's outcome.
Higher rolls are better than low rolls. If the outcome is a 1, the worst reasonable outcome occurs. If the outcome is a 10, the best reasonable outcome occurs. And so on.
The process by which the GM turns the die roll result into an outcome is intentionally left slightly ambiguous. The baseline is simple, and all the player need to understand to be able to play, but there are a bunch of twists the GM can apply to a roll to match the needs of the situation.
Vanilla Rolls
This refers to unmodified rolls--the GM simply asks the player to roll a skill, gets told a number, and then uses the vibe of that number to decide on what happens. This style of rolling is best when you want to be either fast or flexible.
If a roll isn't meant to have a lot of narrative weight, just make it a vanilla roll. "You look the merchant up and down, roll Empathy to get a read on them."
Vanilla rolls are also good when a check can have a wide range of possible outcomes. How does the king respond to the player's joke? You can probably think of a dozen reasonable responses, so you just roll for it and try to match your response to how well the player rolled.
Difficulty Ratings
A problem with vanilla rolls is that they lack weight. If you want to ratchet up the drama of a roll, or if the action has a binary pass/fail state you can tell the player a number they need to beat before they roll.
"You try to talk the bandits into sparing your life. You'll succeed if you can roll at least a 6."--this works a lot like a vanilla roll, but you get a nice moment of suspense before the roll, with a clear moment of release (or terror) when the dice come to a stop.
"You try to pick the lock before the guard arrives. You only have a few seconds, so this is difficulty 8."--there's a clear pass/fail here, so you should give a concrete number to beat.
You can also get fancy if you're feeling inspired and give multiple DCs. "The king will believe your story if you can roll above an 8, will ask for more proof before he's willing to act if you get at least a 4, and will become enraged if you get a 3 or less."
Some Good Difficulty Numbers
Easy: 4 (50% chance of success at Skill 0)
Moderate: 6 (50% at Skill 1)
Difficult: 8 (50% at Skill 2)
Impossible: 10 (40% at Skill 5)
Player Negotiations
The vanilla roll is meant to be, above all other things, quick to resolve. However, if a player is invested in a roll enough to ask questions about the roll you should answer and be as transparent as possible. If they ask what they need to roll to get a certain outcome, tell them. If they ask what will happen if they roll badly, decide. If the player wants to try to improve their chances, either by changing their tactics or arguing that there was something you hadn't considered, you're encouraged to go back and forth with them, up until the point where you're going in circles or other players get bored and/or annoyed, at which point you can always put your foot down.
If the player takes action to increase their odds, there's no need to give them extra dice or change their roll. Simply lower the difficulty/interpret the roll more charitably. A rolled 3 on a character climbing a tall cliff without safety equipment may be them falling, while a rolled 3 on a character with equipment is probably just a sprained ankle.
If an outcome ever has the chance to be catastrophic, you should always broadcast that. Instant death or being thrown in jail for life should never come as a surprise.
Opposed Checks
If two characters are in direct opposition to each other, you can call for an opposed check. In this case they both roll as normal, and whoever rolls the higher result wins. If one character is a NPC you can just give them a reasonable skill rating, where 0 is incompetent, 2 is professional, and 5 is world-class.
Complex Challenges
Some situations are complex enough that a single roll doesn't feel weighty enough to handle them. In this case you can use complex challenges--jot down the name of the problem the player's trying to overcome on a piece of note paper and give it a hit-point rating underneath.
The player then rolls their skill check as normal, against a difficulty rating you provide. For each point they beat the difficulty by, remove 1hp from the problem. If this is enough to reduce the problem to 0hp, the player succeeds at whatever they were attempting.
If they fail to reach the difficulty or if the problem still has 1 or more hp, a complication occurs. This can be almost anything, but will generally be some form of harm or concession ("the out of control fire burns you for 1d6hp as you try to put it out" or "the guard will let you by, but they want a bribe first"), an escalation in stakes or the problem getting worse ("you lose your balance on the narrow path, and are now hanging onto the edge of the cliff by your fingers"), or the arrival of a new problem ("the commotion attracts the ogre in the room next door").
If the player wants to keep attempting to overcome the problem and the problem's still relevant, they can then roll again. If they defeat the problem, they succeed (minus any concessions given), and if they fail another complication occurs and the process repeats itself.
Other Mods
As you play, I'm sure you can think of other situations where twists on the vanilla die roll method seem appropriate. Go ahead and use them--the system is meant to be flexible. The system's explicitly made to slot in well with a 'rulings not rules' playstyle.
