Complication System

 I’m taking another shot at a universal resolution system that does some of the fun things that combat does, but is meant for non-combat challenges. This is almost less of a core mechanical system and more of a flexible way of organizing one’s thoughts during play as the GM--I’m not sure it needs to be player-facing at all. It’s also meant to be completely flexible and adaptable on the fly--all rules listed here are more ‘it works this way unless you have a better idea’ and less ‘this is how you have to do it every time’.

• By default, the PCs are in control of their situation. However, rapidly they will find themselves in situations where things start to get complicated and threaten to spin out of control.

• Complications are issues that the PCs have to deal with through play, that are actively or passively threatening to make everything go wrong. The GM keeps an ever-changing list of all the Complications currently affecting the players and all relevant info needed to adjudicate them.

• Complications can be pretty much any situation where things are threatening to go wrong at any moment.

• Hirelings with low morale are a Complication

• Trying to convince the king of something is a Complication

• Being in a burning building is a Complication

• A teammate having been dragged away by giant spiders is a Complication

• Dangling from a rope over a canyon after a failed skill check is a Complication

• Being stalked by a hungry beast in the jungle is a Complication

• A locked door is a Complication

• Being in a dungeon full of monsters is a Complication

• Complications have two core stats: a Frequency and an Odds

• Frequency is how often you check to see if the complication gets worse

• Odds are how likely things are to get worse

• Periodically (based on the Frequency) you roll the Odds of the complication, and if the roll triggers then you suffer a Consequence--the situation gets worse.

• Frequency can either be a fixed amount of time (once a round, every ten minutes, once per week) or a triggering situation (every time you ask the statue a question, whenever you fire the cannon).

• Odds can either be a flat ‘roll 2 or less on a d6’ or can be some sort of skill check or saving throw the PCs need to make.

• Overloading the dice probably works really well with this

• Consequences can be pretty much anything, but some good go-tos are…

• Raise the stakes on the current Complication

• Dangling from a rope, after one failure the rope begins to fray. After two, it snaps.

• There’s no hard rule against Complications being lethal from the get-go, but it is somewhat bad sport in most genres

• This works even better if done in tandem with one of the below Consequences

• Create a new Complication

• Being in a dungeon full of monsters, rolling a 1 leads to a wandering monster showing up

• Take some damage

• Each turn you’re in the burning building make a CON save or take 1d6 damage from smoke inhalation and heat

• Cost some other resource

• Each time you attempt to pick the lock, failure causes ten minutes to pass (works best if you have other time-sensitive Complications running)

• Or just do something that narratively makes sense

• While your hirelings are upset, there’s a 1 in 6 chance per day they bail in the night with whatever they can steal

• Until you rescue them, there’s a 1 in 6 chance per hour that your teammate who has been dragged away by giant spiders gets eaten

• Consequences should generally just be whatever makes the most sense. If you have multiple ideas for things that can go wrong, roll for them or bring them out in sequence. If you have only one idea, it just does that. If you don’t have any good ideas for Consequences, you shouldn’t use this system.

• The sinking ship’s first Consequence is a stampede running for the lifeboats, then all the heavy objects on deck rolling around as the ship tips, then avoiding being sucked down into the depths.

• Give the players a chance to respond to or mitigate the Consequences, and map the Consequences to the actions of the players

• Wrapping yourself in heavy cloth may help briefly with the fire in a burning building, but failing a save may mean that it catches on fire/is destroyed (removing your protection but allowing you to skip one round of damage)

• Complications resolve whenever narratively appropriate--when the players overcome/circumvent them or when they naturally exhaust themselves

• If you want a Complication to have some weight, when the players take action to defeat it you can begin a progress track that will end the Complication when filled, and that fills up relative to how impactful the player action was

• Each time you repel the beast, it loses 1d4 morale (2d4 if the PCs seriously hurt/scare/frustrate it). Once it loses 5 total it gives up.

• If you can think of a way to twist the Complication each time progress is made on it, do so! If you can keep the stakes up while demanding a new approach to make further progress/changing the consequences of failure it’ll keep things from becoming stale

• Each time you get the king to make you a concession, they make a new demand of you in return

• Use this only if it makes sense. If the player action sidesteps the issue or is just generally smart of appropriate enough, you can just resolve the Complication in one go

• If you have multiple Complications active at the same time, try to keep them on the same die size and just roll once. If more than one trigger off of one roll, pick one randomly or grab the most appropriate/fun and then roll again for the remaining ones

• If someone does something to exacerbate a Complication, you can roll for it once even if it isn’t time for it

• If you make a loud sound in the dungeon, it can provoke an extra Wandering Monster Check

Thoughts

• This is all meant to be system agnostic--more of an aide you can add to an existing system than the core of a ruleset itself

• My problem with my previous attempts at slightly more involved complex resolution systems is that they are prone to being overcomplex while demanding relentless and exhausting creativity without giving much help in prompts

• If it takes multiple rounds to resolve a challenge like picking a complex lock, and you generate multiple Partial Success events, how do you even keep that fresh?

• My hope is that this system helps keep things interesting while not being quite as demanding. You can still use Skill Checks or whatever for more simple situations, and there are plenty of hooks to drape creativity on whenever you have ideas, but if the only complication you can think of is “you take 1d6 damage” that’s fine too

• I intentionally want to give as little guidance as possible on what forms Consequences should take, or rules for resolving Complications. The more all that can stay in the narrative layer, the better.

• On some level, this whole thing is just an attempt to allow for slightly more formal narrative-layer consequences. If the hirelings are unhappy, this puts the fact that something’s wrong on the table and lets it be a slow burn the PCs need to address

• I’m not sure how visible these should be to the players. I think you should generally lean towards making your list public but not actually showing people the notes/stats/etc. If the hirelings are unhappy, let the players know so they can try to do something about it.

• This is honestly probably more useful for slower burn stuff. Anything with an “every round” frequency is easy enough to hold in your head you probably don’t need a formal system unless you’re acting out a gigantic rolling heist or something.

• I don’t think anything about the procedures for this is that wild or new (it’s basically just Wandering Monster checks but for more things), but my hope is that by giving it a name and some loose form it makes it easier to keep multiple Complications active at once

• Like, this can be used to set up a bunch of clocks within a dungeon. You have the default one (wandering monsters), but if you get spotted by a group of weak enemies that run away you can just start a “the goblins are gathering allies to repel you” Complication that slowly builds over time and eventually culminates in a big fight. When you rescue the noble from the lizardman prison there’s a small chance every time you end up in a dangerous situation they do something decisive and incredibly stupid. The symptoms of inhaling all those mushroom spores slowly grow over time. What starts as a straightforward delve eventually turns into a whole bunch of spinning plates threatening to go flying

Platesting: Negotiation System -- 1st Test

 I haven’t been posting here much! I’ve been busy with a RPG-related project that isn’t quite relevant to the topic of this blog, but I do still do occasional pen and paper work. Updates here will probably be infrequent (but not never) for a while.

Covid has been tough for playtesting, but I did finally get a chance to try out my negotiation system in a live game. I’ve actually also been using the other systems posted here in the same game, but given the slightly unusual nature of the game (it’s a single player Deep Carbon Observatory run with a player not especially interested in combat) I don’t have too many thoughts on those yet.

What’s Working

• Overall, it feels pretty good! Every time I’ve used it, we’ve consistently created outcomes that are way more complex and interesting than either what I would have gotten out of a single roll or a simple ruling

• The math works out way better than I was expecting. Players can usually get one concession safely out of a receptive audience, but have to play clever to get additional advantages

What’s Iffy

• The scene-setting and starting rolls (Patience and Stubbornness) have bad pacing. The fact that the GM rolls both means there’s a lot of behind-the-screen bookkeeping while the players don’t have much to do.

• Making one of the two belong to/be handled by the player seems like a good idea

• Maybe even merging the two into one concept somehow. Both the players and the NPC have “NP”--”Negotation Points” and the side whose NP runs out first ‘loses’ the negotiation?

• Also, maybe these shouldn’t be rolled--it creates a fair bit of busywork at the negotiation’s start. Maybe it’d be better to just have both be a number between 1-20 and just provide guidance on how to set the number intelligently?

• While the concepts all make sense in my head, I don’t have a good spiel to explain the system to players yet. Patience and Stubbornness don’t have the self-explanatory nature that something like “HP” does to the average player.

• Patience is a little abstract to judge, as well. Right now it’s this abstract mix of, like--how much does the NPC like you/how much leverage do you have/how tense is the current situation. I need a better way of framing it that makes it easier to make judgement calls on.

• AP Example: The player is trying to convince a newt-man to put off massacring a settlement of humans they’re at war with for a few days while the player tries to broker a peace or something. They’ve been travelling with the newt for a while, but also the newt has been somewhat cynically manipulating them into acting as free mercenaries. I opted to give them 3 dice of Patience, but it felt ambiguous

• The back and forth is a little floppy, I’m noticing. Right now the player makes an argument, then the NPC makes a demand, then the player answers the demand. It’s a weird ABA,ABA,ABA pattern that feels a little stilted (the player makes their answer than their next argument back to back). Figuring out a little ritual to put between the two beats feels like it’d make things run more smoothly.

• Things can get a little hazy when the player makes un-asked-for concessions when answering a NPC demand. Does that count as a gift, and if so am I both rolling to reduce Patience and also add to it? Or should I just treat that as a response so strong to the request that I don’t even reduce Patience that round?

• Semi-related, it seems fairly common for the player’s goal to evolve fluidly throughout the negotiation, as the discussion leads them to think through new aspects of the situation. I wonder if the players shouldn’t be reducing Stubbornness through their arguments, but should rather just be gaining Leverage or some other currency that they can spend on concessions mid-play.

• The moment of reducing the NPC’s Stubbornness to 0 is a little awkward. Reducing them to 0 feels like it should be an instant ‘defeat’ moment, instead of letting them make one more Request before giving in. If I do that, though, then does that mean that the player gets to take two turns in a row if they make additional demands? It all just feels a little awkward

• I’m also finding that it’s fairly common to find a deal that’s appealing to all parties involved before the negotiation is fully over. Like, the players will offer a gift/concession so appealing that it feels unrealistic to keep haggling--I’m finding that it feels pretty okay to just go “oh yeah, if you give them that they’ll just concede” and smoothly end the negotiation.

• AP Example: In the above negotiation, the player offered to take the newt into the dungeon to find weapons to more fully obliterate their enemies. This felt like a good enough deal that I just ended the negotiation early

Overall, I’m really happy with how the mechanic is working so far. There are some definite rough spots, but I’ll just keep iterating on it until it works the way I want.

Rough Drafts: Less Lethal Combat

 One obstacle I’m finding with faction-play is that conflicts in RPGs have a nasty tendency to have resolutions that are, to put it euphemistically, final. The default way to resolve a conflict in a game like D&D is to have a fight, and the default resolution of a fight is that one side is completely dead (usually the NPCs). At best, you’ve killed the vast majority of the NPCs, and a few ran away with their lives. It makes repeated dealings with the same NPCs difficult to pull off, and makes good relations with factions a bit all-or-nothing.

Here’s my take on a Wounds system that takes a little bit of that pressure off. It’s made to be graftable onto most systems that use HP, although it’s probably going to work better on ones with relatively quick combat and low HP totals. If I was going to use this system in something like 5e I might try out halving everyone’s HP totals and tweaking some of the numbers here.

Also, I wouldn’t use this in a campaign with a lot of throwaway fights. If those goblins only exist as a road bump on the path to treasure, nobody really cares whether they get defeated with nothing more than a bump on the head, lose a hand, or die. It works best in situations where your opponents are people using force to try to block you from your goals, but where neither side really wants the other dead or is willing to die for their cause. Think territorial goblins trying to make you leave their lands, bandits shaking you down on the highway, city guards who caught you trying to sneak in, or wild beasts looking for an easy meal.

Credits to Into the Odd and Dogs in the Vineyard as primary sources of inspiration.

Less Lethal Combat System

Quick Summary: Whenever an attack brings you to 0hp or less, gain 1+ Wounds and then try to roll over your number of Wounds on a die. If you pass, you shrug the blow off, but if you fail you keep making the same roll again until you pass. The more times you fail, the worse your injury is.

HP: HP is treated more like your stamina/defense and less like health--it’s assumed that attacks against you that don’t reduce you to 0hp don’t actually land in a meaningful way; you parry them, dodge them, they lack the force to penetrate your armor, etc. Hitting 0hp means you’re defenseless--you no longer have the stamina to dodge, parry, etc. Enemies with weak motivations will try to run away once they hit 0hp.

Wounds: Whenever you take damage and are left at 0hp, you gain 1 Wound. Additionally, for each 5hp of damage taken past what was needed to bring you to 0hp you take an additional Wound. You then roll for harm.

Roll for Harm: Try to roll over your number of Wounds on a die. The side of the die depends on how deadly the attack was (see Deadly Attacks table). If you fail, roll again until you succeed. The more failures you get before succeeding, the worse the consequences of the attack are (see Harm Table). Note that some attacks might have alternate harm tables.

Pulled Punches: An attacker can choose to make their attack one less step deadly (increase the Check for Harm die size by one step). This is the norm in most battles that aren’t life or death--if the goal of the NPCs is ‘drive the PCs away’, ‘capture the PCs’, or ‘rough up these strangers who came into my favorite bar and then insulted me’, they typically pull their punches. It’s a good idea to remind your PCs of this at the start of your first few fights using this system.

Healing: A good night’s rest (the type that’s hard to get while camping) will heal 1 Wound. This subsystem probably works best in situations where HP is fairly easy to regain outside of combat but hard to regain in combat.

Deadly Attacks Table
Die Size	Type of Attack
1d8	Non-lethal weapons. Punches. Most improvised weapons (pool cues, large sticks, cast iron pans, etc)
1d6	Most weapons. Swords, spears, maces, etc.
1d4	Especially deadly attacks. Axes, lightning bolts, dragon’s breath, etc.
1d4-1	A cursed sword that rots the flesh it cuts. Hellfire. A chainsaw?

Harm Table
# of Failures	Result
Passed First Time	No effect! You shrug off the attack.
1 Fail	Injured! Roll on the Injury table and gain the corresponding condition. Enemies who aren’t making a desperate last stand will run away at this point.
2 Fails	Knocked Out! You’re unconscious for the duration of the fight. When you wake up roll 1d8--if the result is equal to your Wounds or lower roll on the Injury table.
3 Fails	Dying! You’re unconscious. When you receive medical attention roll 1d8--if the result is equal to your Wounds or lower you have died. If the medical attention is within a round of the attack or if it comes from someone with medical training you can roll twice and pick the better. If it’s both within a round and from someone with medical training, or if you receive magical healing you pass automatically. If an hour passes without medical attention roll twice and pick the worse--if you still pass you wake up. If you aren’t dead, roll another 1d8. If the result is equal to your wounds or lower roll on the Injury table.
4+ Fails	Instant Death! You die dramatically--your head cut off, your heart run through, your body torn apart.

Injury Table
1d10	Body Part/ Symptom	Base Effects
1	Leg	Movement speed drops to 5’/round
2	Arm	Disadvantage on all attacks or relevant skill checks
3	Head	Dazed. Can only take one action/round (ie-move OR attack)
4	Chest	Treat your Wounds as 2 higher for all checks.
5	Trouble Breathing	Can’t go above 0hp
6	Eyes	Blinded. Your system probably has a way of handling this
7	Bleeding	Gain 1 Wound (and roll Harm Table) each round until someone takes an action to bandage you. 2-in-6 chance of bleeding resuming each time you exert yourself or get jostled.
8	Scared	Make a save or run away/refuse to act whenever put in danger
9	Angry	Make a save or attack berserkly whenever provoked/take damage
10	Confused	Whenever you have to choose a target (who to attack, what direction to go, which chalice to take, etc) make a save or pick randomly without realizing it. If attacking, pick target normally and on a fail you target a random person within reach (if melee) or within 10’ of target (if ranged).

Injury Duration Table
Works just like the Harm Table--roll 1d8 and try to beat your Wounds total. Reroll until you pass and count failures. Rolled when you take a 10 minute rest (don't slow down combat by doing it right away).
# of Failures	Result
Passed First Time	Painful, but no real damage. Symptoms end after a 10 minute rest.
1 Fail	Bruised. Heals with a night’s rest.
2 Fails	Sprained. Heals with a week’s rest.
3 Fails	Broken. Heals with 2d4 weeks’ rest.
4+ Fails	Permanent. Will not heal without magical assistance.

Other Rules

• If you roll max value when Rolling for Harm but still fail, reroll but with two dice instead of one. If you do so, get max value on all dice again, and still don’t roll high enough reroll with three, and so on.

• If the type of injury an attack would inflict is obvious, just go with that instead of rolling. Some attacks probably inflict injuries not even on the list--maybe a bolt of pure chaos causes mutations instead of injuries.

• Maybe a centipede’s bite causes nausea on one fail, debilitating vomiting on two fails, and choking on one’s vomit at three fails, and cardiac arrest on four fails. Modify things as desired.

• While NPCs generally pull their punches by default, this stops being the case very quickly if the PCs don’t do it, too. If the PCs escalate beyond what the situation calls for roll (even unintentionally) morale for their opponents. On a failure they run away/surrender. On a pass they get mad and start fighting seriously. Decapitating someone during a bar fight either ends the bar fight instantly or makes all hell break loose.

• Characters at 0hp are vulnerable to improvisational fuckery. PCs can declare that they’re doing something before they make their attack, and if the attack lands it does no damage but the fuckery succeeds. This could be kicking them off a cliff, putting them in a headlock, disarming them, putting a blade to their throat, etc.

• NPCs can also do this. An ogre might grab a 0hp player and hold them hostage. A wyvern might grab a 0hp player and try to fly off with them. A goblin might push a 0hp player in front of a mine cart to cover their retreat (forcing an ally to rescue them rather than chase down the goblin). A huge frog might swallow a 0hp player whole (gain 1 Wound per turn in stomach until rescued). PCs being at 0hp is the GM’s license to get creative in ways that might feel unfair at other times.

• Most poisons don’t have any immediate effect, but if you get hit with one at 0hp then you gain (potentially multiple) Wounds after the fight ends and must make a Check for Harm. They’re more for making sure your target dies than for winning fights.

• There are lots of different types of poisons, though. Some work instantly, or after 1d4 rounds, or inflict status effects rather than wounds.

Additional Notes

• This is my first draft! I’ll come back and write more about this once it’s gotten some playtesting in.

• It’s not super explicit in the rules, but a huge part of this system is the idea of ‘how much are you willing to risk for your convictions?’. Most enemies will run away or surrender long before they’re actually killed.

• Enemies without any real conviction will be ‘defeated’ as soon as they hit 0hp. These might be bandits looking for easy money, goblins who don’t like humans showing up in their territory, bullies looking to show some out-of-towners who’s boss, or a tiger looking for prey.

• Enemies with something to fight for will generally be ‘defeated’ once injured. These might be goblins defending their lair, criminals fighting over territory, soldiers/guards on the job, or a tiger on the edge of starvation.

• Enemies who are cornered or are making a desperate last stand will only be ‘defeated’ once rendered unconscious. These might be parents trying to buy their children time to escape, brainwashed cultists who have been whipped into a frenzy, or cornered goblins who know the PCs will just kill them anyway if they surrender.

• ‘Defeated’ enemies will by default retreat to a safe distance and shout encouragement at those still fighting, although obviously different types of enemies will probably act differently depending on the situation.

• Try not to corner players. Make it possible for them to run or surrender without it just being a TPK every time. The goal is that this system should make it relatively hard to die by surprise, but easy to die if you keep fighting past your limits.

• Another goal of this system is to flip the players goals from killing their enemies and towards defeating their enemies without killing them.

• Maybe you have to trespass on gnoll territory to reach the Water Shrine. If you can drive them off without killing any of them they’ll probably forget about you as soon as you leave. If you fireball them into charred corpses you’ve got enemies for life, and you can forget about asking them for help when the Goblin King’s armies come knocking at your door.

• If you slit the throats of a bunch of guards when you break out of prison to prove your innocence you might be able to prove that you were framed, but you’re still going to be stuck as outlaws for all that murder you did.

• Part of the fun of this is that things can go wrong on a moment’s notice. With bad enough rolling, a single punch can make a character fall badly and fatally break their skull. Let shit go off the rails when these things happen. The dice are just taking your adventure in an unexpected new direction.

• Don’t slow down the game with a bunch of rolling on the injury table/etc for NPCs if they’re not going to try to keep fighting through it. If these are NPCs you’re going to have repeated relationships with then you can just roll a die or two after the fight to get a sense of how many of those goblins should show up to next week’s diplomatic meeting wearing eyepatches or holding crutches (or not showing up at all).

• This system probably wants a custom morale system to pair with it--it already touches on morale in some places, and so weaving it into a bigger picture would probably help. This has already gotten pretty huge, though, so maybe not today.

• I’m pretty sure my next RPG project is going to be a game about adventurer-diplomat-naturalists.