Against the Inevitable: Luck of the Draw

Hello all. I’d like to kick off the new year by showing off the chance mechanics I’ve been working on for Against the Inevitable. Right now I’m leaning toward using cards instead of dice as they lend an “invisible hand of fate” feel that seems to mesh well with the game’s theme.

I’m using a simple, “draw a card, highest card wins” as the basic mechanics. I then let character traits expand on that.

At the most basic level, you’ve got the hand size being set by either a specialized schtick (0 to 3 cards) or a more general background (0 to 2 cards). On top of that I’ve got goals and archetypes/roles raising the value of the high card if a certain number or suit comes up. To finish things off, heroes can use Drive to draw extra cards and may gain limited use prizes during play to raise their card values. In contrast, enemies lack drive but gain reliable raises to their card values through prowess traits.

One interesting side effect of this is that goals and archetypes actually become more effective as hand size increases. That means that following a goal or archetype is more likely to pay off when it aligns with the character’s signature skills. Even more interesting is that those goals and archetypes are even more likely to have an impact when a character is spending drive. I like the idea that the hero’s desires and nature are made more prominent when they’re pushing themselves.

So that’s it in a nutshell. It’s a simple draw high mechanic with extra features added as the character gains supporting traits. Now I just need to hammer through the numbers and see how this works with the other mechanics. On a related note, I’ve been doing my probability testing in javascript. I may end up releasing my test program when this is all done so you folks can see how the probabilities work out. If anyone wants a peek before then just let me know.

Against the Inevitable: Player Allegiances

Today I’d like to finish much of my overview of Against the Inevitable by look at the sides players can take and their effects.

Allegiances

The game comes with 3 allegiances: Heroic, Adversarial, and Neutral.

Heroic players try to help characters work their way past challenges, obstacles, and enemy resistance.

Adversarial players make the heroes work to achieve their goals while providing interesting opponents.

Neutral players add details and flavor to the world while following their own personal goals.

Allegiance Effects

Goals

Heroic and adversarial players each have specific goals defined by the scenario. These goals will be strongly opposed to each other, so that achieving both is difficult to impossible. In general, the heroic side wins if they defeat the “nemesis” created by the adversarial side, while the adversarial side wins if the nemesis beats the heroes.

Adversarial players also have a possible secondary goal of making obstacles and enemies that the heroes want to engage.

Unlike the other sides, neutral players do not share a common goal. Instead, each neutral player follows their own personal goals. These hidden agendas are chosen randomly when the scenario begins. These agendas may include things like “collect bribes from all other players” or “cause the destruction of at least 1 location”. I also set this up so neutral players must complete multiple agendas to win, while making each agenda easier.

Abilities

Heroic players can grant characters they control special heroic traits. They also have improved narration rights when all threats have been eliminated (threat pool is empty and no invested opposition is left).

Adversarial players can invest threat in enemies, obstacles, or complications to make them harder to overcome. They also have a collective ability to set up a “nemesis” for the final confrontation. This ability grants extra threat points to build up the nemesis. However, it can only be used after all other threats have been eliminated. In effect, the adversarial side can get a “second wind” to create an appropriately tough big bad. The nemesis can also force a defeat on the heroic side if it wins the final challenge.

Neutral players have an “arbiter” trait which lets them block the votes of any players without that trait. In effect, that means that if any neutral players are present they can make judgement calls among themselves. Note that as with other players, arbiters can be “bribed” to gain their vote by offering up something they want.

Other Effects

Each time a player is added to the heroic side, points are added to the threat pool. This helps ensure that even if heroic players don’t add special traits to their characters the adversarial side still has threat points to work with.

Against the Inevitable: System Outline

Over the holiday, I’ve managed to make some good progress hammering out the details for “Against the Inevitable”. Here’s a rough look at how I’m planning to break the system down.

Getting Started

To start a new game of AtI, do the following:

• Choose a Scenario: I’m planning on using “scenario cards” as a way to kick start play. These will include a summary of the setting, the situation, each side’s goals, and some possible starting scenes.
• Declare Allegiance: Once the scenario has been chosen, players can choose to ally themselves with the heroic, adversarial, or neutral sides. Each side carries its own special benefits.
• Opening Scene: Pick one of the opening scenes on the scenario card or make up one of your own.

Player Abilities

All players can use the following actions to affect the game:

• Narrate: Each player can state actions, facts, or events about the game world. If not opposed, these statements become true. By default, narration can not dramatically change a major element of the game world, nor block a character’s progress to their goals.
• Oppose: Any player can object to a given statement. When this happens, resolve it as follows.
  • Negotiate: When an objection is made, players can try to convince the objecting players to withdraw their objections. If no compromise can be reached within a reasonable time, go to the next step.
  • Draw: When negotiation fails, use chance to determine the winner. I’ll go into detail on this in a later post, but right now I’m thinking of using a card draw mechanic to support a “forces of fate” feel to the game.
• Claim: Each player can claim a setting element once per scene. Claimed elements are automatically considered major elements. The claiming player also gets increased control over the element and its actions. I may allow for a second round of claims if all players have claimed something in a given scene.
• Challenge: Players can propose challenges as desired. A proposed challenge must have at least one player willing to support each side before it can begin. Challenges give players a way to bend narrative rules, gain mechanical advantages, and progress toward their final goals.
• Advance: Each player can advance a character once per scene. Advancing a character can add new traits or make it easier to add extra details to the character.

That covers a lot of the core gameplay. Next time I’ll look at the different player allegiances and how they shape the game.

Against the Inevitable: Revelations

Last time, I looked into how to set up characters quickly and easily. This time I want to look at some possible mechanics for building up those characters during play.

Character Reveals

Once per scene each character can reveal something about some part of the game world. The target of the reveal can gain a background, goal, or schtick that’s appropriate to what’s being revealed. A revelation can also be used to swap an active trait for a dormant one.

Both the truth of a revelation and its effects can be opposed by other players if it doesn’t fit with what’s already been established. In that case, the group must find a compromise (possibly assisted by chance) for results that do fit.

Goals

Goals determine what a character is striving to achieve. Characters start with no goals, but can attain them through revelations. When a character gains a goal they can choose to make it one of their active goals.

A character can normally only have 3 active goals at a time. If they activate a new goal while at this limit, they must make one of their currently active goals dormant.

Once per scene, an active goal can be tapped to either allow a reroll or to keep the character from being forced out of a challenge.

Schticks

Schticks cover what the character excels at and how they do so. This can include a wide range of things, such as special training, talent, items, or allies.

In mechanical terms, Schticks function much like backgrounds, with the following exceptions.

• Schticks are more narrowly defined than backgrounds and generally focus on a single feature, ability, or object.
• Schticks can raise strongly related ability checks to “good” instead of “fair”.
• A character can have no more than 5 schticks active at a time.

Wrapping Up

Looking over this, I may combine schticks and backgrounds into a single trait, while capping the number that can be “active” at a time (as with Goals).

One thing I do like is that the mechanical advantages of adding traits will cap out after a few scenes. At that point, revelations become more attractive as a tool for inserting ideas into the narrative.

Next up will probably be some actual number crunching, though I might not post that part up. I’ll also need to decide if cards or dice better serve the feel I’m going for with this game.

Against the Inevitable: Quick Draw Character Creation

Now that I’ve got a solid idea on how the game progresses, I want to take a step back and look at character creation. As I’ve mentioned, I’m leaning toward having quick start characters that are fleshed out during play. Here’s how I’m thinking of handling it.

Creating Characters

To create a character, just give them an identifier and a description. The identifier will usually be a name, but place holders like “the captain of the guard” or “the lady in red” work as well.

The description is just a few sentences that cover who the character is. This may also include what they do, what they look like, their species and nationality, and so on. During play this description can be treated like a background.

Backgrounds give the character a basic rating on ability checks. This rating should be “fair” if those with the background commonly perform that task, “poor” if they can perform the task, and “terrible” if the background suggests no ability to do the task. Some backgrounds will let characters do things most people can’t. Any such extraordinary ability checks should be rated no better than “poor”.

Behind the Scenes

The idea here is to make character creation extremely quick and easy while still having mechanical support for them. Backgrounds provide that support by giving characters ratings based on how closely the task matches what characters should be able to do.

I do have some concerns about having one player choosing an extremely versatile background like “demi-god” while another takes a more limited one like “diseased beggar”. However, this really just gives the character more opportunities to participate in a challenge (and potentially suffer the consequences). The “extraordinary ability” rule should help curb this further as the versatile character can try to do more things, but has a greater risk of failure when they do so. I may also add a rule that gives perks when a background is used against you to help the underdog backgrounds.

Note that this concern mainly deals with heroic backgrounds. Having an apparent power mismatch is fine between villains as they’re often portrayed at a wider range of power levels. A feeling of equality seems generally more important on the heroic side than the villainous one.

Wrap Up

This should give us a nice minimal basis for character creation. Next time I’ll be looking at “revelation” mechanics to help flesh out characters in play.

Delver’s Legacy: Aspects & Abilities

Here is an interesting little addition I thought up for the Delver’s Legacy project. Oddly enough I’ve noticed many interesting ideas pop up not when I’m actively trying to solve a problem, but when I’m just resting and letting my thoughts drift.

“Pick 3″ Character Creation

To create a new character pick a race, class, and background for the character. Each of these aspects comes with a starter package. Copy anything listed in the starter package into the appropriate areas on your character sheet.

Extra Option – Random Aspects: When picking an aspect, you can chose to use dice or cards to pick the aspect at random. Each time you do this, the character’s luck increases by 1. Luck can be spent during play to cheat death and redo checks.

Most aspects will have an “ability ratings” entry in their starter package. Copy those ratings in the appropriate column for that aspect. Once you’ve filled all 3 columns, add up the total for each row and write it in the ability score column. Next, divide those scores by 3 (rounded down) and place that value in the ability bonus column.

Design Notes

All aspects should have an ability rating line. Background and classes will usually have equipment entries. Races will generally have very few features in the starter package. However, they will let the character gain additional features through later purchases. This should reduce how many features a new player has to memorize while also making it easier to balance out races.

Humans will probably have the ability to copy the ability rating of their class or background. There will likely also be backgrounds that mimic the scores of a race or class, as well as a background with randomized scores.

Behind the Scenes

As you may notice, I’ve been a big fan of fast character creation lately. While rolled ability scores are traditional, I feel the pick 3 approach is significantly faster. It also helps ensure characters start with abilities that match their class and lets us apply racial ability scores without breaking the standard score range.

The last point is pretty significant. If we want ability scores to add to checks, it’s a good idea to constrain the range. Otherwise, we’re back to the situation where one character automatically passes anything that challenges a character who didn’t pump that score.

Against the Inevitable: Challenge Rewards

Today I’d like to take a quick look at the rewards characters can earn for winning challenges. I’ve been mulling it over and it seems like I can cover what I’m looking for with the following effects:

• Narrate: The controlling player can state something about the game world and have it become a fact. The cost of narration depends on how heavily it changes the game world and the course of events. These additions have no direct mechanical effects, but can be used to justify rulings and influence character actions.
• Empower: A target character temporarily gains a trait of your choosing. This can include boosting a character’s abilities or adding a vulnerability to enemies.
• Weaken: A target trait has its effectiveness reduced. This can potentially negate the trait if it’s taken far enough.
• Block: This effect prevents a certain course of action. This can be limited to a single character or applied to an entire group. Taken far enough, this can even be used to take characters out of play.
• Invest: This event simply lets the player store reward points in a story element such as an item or scene. Points stored this way can be tapped during later challenges that make use of that element.
• Negate: This effect removes a previously purchased reward. The cost will probably be slightly higher than it cost to place the reward. Otherwise, it would be easy to get caught up in “is too, is not” cycles.

I’ll start working out some actual numbers soon, but I wanted to float this out there and see if there’s anything missing. The players should be able to combine these as needed. For example, if the heroes are captured that would be a scene change (Narrate), possibly coupled with blocking and weakening effects.

Against the Inevitable: Notoriety

Last time I went over how heroes can accumulate Drive to help overcome obstacles. That resource also acts an incentive for heroic players to flesh out heroic characters and their place in the world. This time I’d like to look at adding a similar incentive for nemesis players.

Sample Rules

When an obstacle is created, it has no Notoriety. When an obstacle defeats an attempt to overcome it, the obstacle gains Notoriety. Obstacles can also gain Notoriety if they cause a hero to lose something of great personal significance.

When an obstacle is defeated, its notoriety can be spent to limit or add twists to the heroes’ victory narration. Notoriety may also be spent to feed a small portion of the obstacles threat back into the main threat pool.

Behind the Scenes

In the Big Three post, I said the nemesis players’ job was “make the main characters work for their victory and to make challenges the other players want to see beaten (ex. a villain the group loves to hate)”. Notoriety awards the nemesis side each time the heroes are beaten. However, it can’t actually be spent until the obstacle itself is defeated. When combined with Drive, this should create an interesting back and forth between the two sides.

It’s also worth noting that personal losses feed both Notoriety and Drive, awarding players on both sides. This could potentially be overplayed, but it may be a useful dramatic tool.

On a side note, I’m letting Notoriety feed threat back into the main pool in part to encourage heroes to overcome obstacles before they build up too much Notoriety. It also serves as a useful drain for excess Notoriety if not all of it is used mitigating heroic narration. That in turn may actually encourage suitably impressive heroic narration on high Notoriety foes.

Against the Inevitable: Long Shots

One thing we see often in stories is the heroes making “million to one” shots as the plot demands. Since part of AtI’s theme is fighting against overwhelming odds, having the mechanics support these “long shots” would be a big plus.

Let’s start by looking at when long shots succeed. Barring characters known for their luck, these events are pretty rare. After all, the more coincidences and million to one shots you line up, the more you may strain the player’s suspension of disbelief. They also tend to happen later in the story at dramatic moments.

There’s also the question of who get the lucky shots. In general, the more “face time” a character has had, the more likely it is that they’ll be able to pull off a lucky shot. Likeable but low power characters are also likely to pull off these kind of stunts.

Sample Rules

Given the above, here’s a rough outline of what I’m planning for heroic luck.

Heroic characters start with 0 points of Drive. Heroic characters can gain Drive from the following.

• Revealing interesting details that help establish who the character is.
• Establishing or strengthening a bond with another character.
• Losing something of great personal significance to the character.
• Fulfilling a motive or being prevented from doing so.

This reward is granted at the end of a scene. Normally, only the single strongest award applies. By default, neutral players determine how much Drive is awarded. If there are no neutral players, all players other than the one controlling the character make the call.

Drive can be spent to help a character push themselves beyond their limits and can even make luck turn in the character’s favor. Ideally, drive costs should make long shots more viable at relatively low cost, but should become less cost effective when trying to make something a sure thing. That should help keep the odds in a range that promotes a certain level of tension at the table.

Flow Effects

Adding Drive makes heroes more powerful as the game continues. When combined with threat pools, this should result in the Nemesis side having a strong advantage early game, but the heroes building up strong turnaround potential as the game advances.

It’s also worth noting that Drive build up is fueled by a mix of roleplaying, pursuing motives, and building ties to setting elements.

Next time I’ll look at possible reward mechanics for the Nemesis side.

4E Variant: Pairing Feats

One the complaints I see now and again in 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons discussions is the existence of “feat taxes”. For those not familiar with the term, “feat taxes” are essentially feats the player feels they must by simply to keep the character from becoming ineffective.

The biggest culprits are usually the “math fix” feats such as Expertise, Weapon/Implement Focus, and Improved Defenses. For some classes this can also include armor proficiency (ex. Constitution heavy shamans) or melee training (ex. many defenders which don’t specialize in strength).

A common answer to this is to simply give those feats away for free as a house rule. However, if you’re doing that anyway, why not kill two birds with one stone?

Rules Change

If a character selects a “flavor” feat, they gain a “tax” feat at the next level where they wouldn’t normally gain a feat. For example, if a character took a flavor feat at level 4, they would gain a tax feat at level 5. If they did this again at level 11, they’d gain another tax feat at level 13 (level 12 already grants a feat).

The list of possible flavor and tax feats is determined by the DM. Prime candidates for flavor feats include Linguist and teamwork feats. Bloodlines may also make acceptable flavor feats. Prime candidates for tax feats include Weapon/Implement Focus, Improved Defenses, and the various expertise feats. Melee Training and proficiency feats may also be reasonable tax feats.

Behind the Scenes

The purpose of this change is to make feat taxes less onerous by linking them to free feats. It also serves to bring underused feats into play by reducing their cost. After all, rather than making you loss on a higher utility feat to gain them, you simply delay when the addition of a “boring but practical” feat by 1 to 2 levels.