Shark brainstorming I

[Shark]

actions should be fluid and fast.

How variable do we want to make adrenaline/how much dice management is ideal, IE, how much addition to the dice and dice manipulation (rolling again, increasing dice size) do we want? The factors we are balancing are between variance and simplicity. The benefit of variance is detail, the benifit of simplicity is speed and ease. I'd say, that for this aspect of dice rolling, I'd weigh them 60/40 in favor of simplicity. That's not to say I'm not all about detail, but I think we should move away from dice rolling as the primary object of variance in order to highlight decision-making and critical thinking over random chance. Being that we are proposing 1 second time increments, we have the opportunity to put emphasis on an aspect of roleplaying that didn't really exist in much of a form before, that being timing. Timing and this idea Alex mentioned of absolute actions, simple things you can just do which modify an action directly, and don't in themselves need a roll. Ideally the roll is the random chance involved in an action, everything else should be already determined, IE skill and action choice, with adrenaline being the wildcard that allows us to apply the concept of willpower or testicular fortitude to the players, the concept of resolve to get the job done. I think that skills can still be a random roll, though I think there are other avenues we should explore.

[alex]

How variable do we want to make adrenaline/how much dice management is ideal, IE, how much addition to the dice and dice manipulation (rolling again, increasing dice size) do we want?

As for the size of the dice, I'm fairly content with the range of d6 to d12. d4 seemed a little low, and the jump to d20 is too large. The dice simulator (even if we don't use that exact system) has convinced me that adrenaline will scale fine.

As for dice manipulation, I see two major reasons to have it. Firstly is fun. I've enjoyed the times in 4e when we've saved the day with a clutch reroll. I'd like rerolls to be rare and spectacular. So perhaps what "reroll" means in our game is rerolling any number of dice you'd like. I like this better than giving away the ability to reroll a single die more often.

The reason to have dice size upgrades is to allow character to spike up above the potential of their dice pool. It would be lame if something was DC 9 it was impossible for you because you only had one d10 in your pool. I like the natural idea of letting the max value on the dice be the cap for it, so dice upgrades are needed. We could do something weird where weapons add d4s that can be added onto a regular die, but allowing the upgrades seems like a cleaner solution.

As for how often that's happening we'll have to see. Ideally you shouldn't be changing your dice pool that often (seems like that would slow things down).

The two things I'm most flexible about when it comes to the dice pool are 1) the number of dice 2) where they come from (stats, skills, etc)

[Shark]

I think that before we take a step forward, we need to take a step backwards and evaluate things as they stand. I was pretty tired last night when I got down to writing and as I'd left my notebook at work I couldn't put any of the stuff I thought of at work into play. I think we need to understand each other's processes before we continue. I think that we need to remain super flexible about all ideas and concepts, as otherwise we'll go the way of betamax and the dinosaurs, because our ideas will either be high quality but too complex (betamax) or lumbering and unable to make the cut (like the dinosaurs).

I agree that it would be unfortunate if somebody couldn't make a dc 9 something because they only had one d10, I'd imagine that means you're thinking that one success doesn't actually equal a success? As 1 d10 would be enough to gain one success, however I think it's more a weird mechanic issue than something we need to build around and for, rather than apply a rule patch to it, we should create rules that make sense and work similarly, but more smoothly. I don't think we should use adrenaline as too big of a bandaid, I think it should do one helpful and general thing, but I don't like the idea of transforming it into inflated dice, it's adding a mechanic to deal with an issue with the dice system. Not smooth enough, I'd say.

Anyways, I think that we're on two different wavelengths, where I'm still in brainstorming mode and willing to follow any train of thought out to the end, that doesn't mean I'm sold on all the ideas that we've fleshed out, whereas once you get set on something it's like moving a boulder to get something else into the system. I just don't think it's time to lock anything in, I think we're circling the good stuff, but I don't know that we've landed fully on it. So what I'd like to request is a more open dialog, where all ideas are acceptable and worthy of at least a moments contemplation, as even in a bad idea might be the seed of a good idea. I think we've pushed ahead from too many fragmented idea sessions, that we need to work up from a foundation that we both build, and accept, and if ever we differ on an idea, we should make a pro and con list or some such in order to determine which way to go, and if that doesn't work we should attempt to split the difference or go in a different direction.

Lets rock some ideas out now:

During game design I think we should remove the dice rolling element as much as possible and use percentages, as, it'll be easier for us to reason out what percentage actions and shit should have to succeed. We can add whatever dice rolling system we perfect into it without too much re-thinking, it will greatly help game design/balance.

What are stats? Every roleplaying game has them and they are almost all basically the same. Is this because it's the best possible way to do it? Or is this because it's the only way people figure it'll work.

What if instead of stats we had just character traits? Short, fat, energetic, sinuous, sensuous, peg-legged, quick witted? All of these would add modifiers to the roll or just to the action, or put limits to the roll and or action.

We could use physical attributes to determine the dice size, perhaps and skills to determine the number of dice, or vice versa.

I think that an easier work around to increasing dice size would be to allow adrenaline to increase the number rolled by more than the dice would allow. I think that's a simpler way to solve the problem than doing something where would be able to grow your dice with adrenaline, or any other way. The problem with the dice concept we have now and with how I'd like the system to work is that, I'd like every action to be open to everybody, and the better you are at it, the higher the probability that you will succeed.

[alex]

During game design I think we should remove the dice rolling element as much as possible and use percentages, as, it'll be easier for us to reason out what percentage actions and shit should have to succeed. We can add whatever dice rolling system we perfect into it without too much re-thinking, it will greatly help game design/balance.

I like the idea of discussing the flat percentages we want for actions. However, I'm not sure about leaving the dice rolling out. Dice rolling is a critical part of the game, and we need to consider it at every step. We can't just say "well, i think this action ought to be 65% likely to succeed, increasing 6% with each skillup, so lets try to make that into dice" I think it makes more sense to think of a great rolling system and then understand it, so we can build actions and modifiers knowing the effect they will have (via a simulator)

What are stats? Every roleplaying game has them and they are almost all basically the same. Is this because it's the best possible way to do it? Or is this because it's the only way people figure it'll work.

I think stats are a natural way to measure someone. It's important to know how strong, fast, smart, etc people are. I think our system will be unique enough that we don't need to reinvent every aspect of tabletop RPGs. It's not a bad thing if people recognize concept right away because they've seen them before.

What if instead of stats we had just character traits? Short, fat, energetic, sinuous, sensuous, peg-legged, quick witted? All of these would add modifiers to the roll or just to the action, or put limits to the roll and or action.

This is kinda how LARP worked if you recall. You had a bunch of words that described what you were doing. The problem is putting them together into a system. With LARP they grouped them into physical/mental/social and then counted the raw number of traits. We can do something similar, but I can't think of a way to do it with JUST words.

We could use physical attributes to determine the dice size, perhaps and skills to determine the number of dice, or vice versa.

We could, but again face the issue of dice size caps except now there's only one way to increase the size of your dice (more stats) whereas previous you could raise stats or skills to get bigger dice. Not sure of the advantage of this idea, it could work but needs to be expanded.

I think that an easier work around to increasing dice size would be to allow adrenaline to increase the number rolled by more than the dice would allow. I think that's a simpler way to solve the problem than doing something where would be able to grow your dice with adrenaline, or any other way. The problem with the dice concept we have now and with how I'd like the system to work is that, I'd like every action to be open to everybody, and the better you are at it, the higher the probability that you will succeed

.

Yeah, letting adrenaline go beyond the size cap is easy. It makes it a little harder to keep track of since once you go beyond the cap, there's nothing on the table to remind you that you have (unlike up until the dice size cap when you can just turn over the dice).

I think upgrading the size of the dice won't be as hard as you think, or very often. I'm not even sure we even need to let people go beyond their dice, if they can't hit the DC they need to change tactics!

As for letting every action open to everyone, I have mixed feelings. I think we both agree it shouldn't be like 4e, where everyone has a totallly different array of crazyily named moves. But I also think that the advanced skills should unlock interesting new actions/attacks that other people just can't even attempt. I think we need to strike a good balance, with basic actions accessible to everyone (made interesting by the particular modifiers you have) and more advanced actions coming with the skills.

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