The Problem with Perks 2

Note: This is a repost of a previous post. Blogger is unwilling to allow me to edit the older version into a readable format, so I've decided to create a new version. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Selecting mechanical perks can be one of the most satisfying aspects of the number crunching of character creation. Most modern systems have feats, extras, perks, or an equivalent mechanic that lets you give your character an extra boost at the table. These abilities are thrilling because, unlike attributes or skills, you may be the only one with a certain perk. This is exciting! You're the *only one* who can fly fighter planes. You're the *only one* who gets to roll 12 siders for long sword damage. You're the *only one* who can't be surprised in combat.

This uniqueness can be exciting for a game designer, but it can also be a pitfall, and here's why: By creating a perk that says "You can do X, Y, or Z," you are making it clear that a character cannot do X, Y, or Z without the perk. This can lead to dangerous situations at the table where a GM is caught between two of the "rules" that many GMs strive to obey. On the one hand, telling a player, "Yes, you can fly a fighter plane in this situation even though you don't have the Fighter Pilot perks," can be a stab in the back for a player who did take the perk. At best, it's a slippery slope toward another situation where some other player at the table *will* have the perk in question. ("But you let John justify flying a fighter plane without the fighter plane skill!")

On the other hand, telling a player no violates "the rule of cool.*" "Since my character was raised by hunter-gatherers in the Forgotten Forest, he should be able to track someone using the survival skill, even though I didn't take the stunt." This kind of statement may be extreme, but this sort of thing makes sense sometimes. For instance, if a player decides to leap from the balcony and attack, but doesn't have the "leap attack" perk, how can you justify saying no?

While this is really an issue that comes up at the table, smart design should dodge some problems. When you're designing perks for your game, (and I do recommend perks; they're fun!) never create a perk that says: "With this perk you can do X." Instead, phrase your perk like this:  "With this perk you can always do X and you get Y bonus." Not "With this perk you can wield exotic weapons," but "With this perk you can wield exotic weapons and you get a +1 bonus with the weapon of your choice." Not "You can fly fighter planes," but "You can fly fighter planes and receive 2 bonus dice of dog-fighting rolls." Not "You can roll survival in place of investigation to track someone through the forest," but "You can roll survival in place of investigation to track someone through the wild and receive a +2 bonus to this roll in the environment of your choice.

*For those unfamiliar, the rule of cool states that if a player says they want to do something, and it's cool, you should just let them do it.

The Problem with Perks

This post has been cleaned because of                                                        formating issues. See next post. Thanks

Ritualized Magic in your Fate game

Although Dresden Files is in playtesting as we speak, my group is about to start a homebrew urban fantasy game and that means magic rules. Here are the rules I've whipped up for magical rituals. Magic on the fly is based an entirely different subsystem that I might share if there's interest. As with all my homebrews, this is not neccesarily original, and has been heavily influenced by my lurking on the FATErpg group.

A magic ritual can be extremely powerful because of the many options spellcasters have available to them. By manipulating the materials, environment, and length of the ritual, ritualists can rack up large bonuses. Ritual magic is also particularly powerful thanks to its improvisational nature; almost any effect is possible.

Step One: Negotiate Effect with the GM
The intent of the spell should be clear before any dice are rolled. Almost any effect is potentially possible, but some might be considered too difficult to even attempt. For instance, mind control might not be available in the setting your group is using.

Most spells will either attempt to place aspects on a target or duplicate the effect of a mundane skill --possibly on a larger scale. Many rituals, especially wards and protection spells, may also be modeled by blocks.

Step Two: Gather Mystical Energy
A Gather roll is a Ritualism roll made to summon or collect the energy for a spell. A Gather roll may be subject to a penalty or bonus based on the caster's tradition. Situational aspects like "Mars in the Fifth House," "Ley-Line Nexus," or "The Power of Stone Henge" can be tagged to gain a bonus to the Gather roll.

Step Three: Focus Mystical Energy
A Focus roll is a Ritualism roll made to channel or direct the energy gathered into the desired effect. A Focus roll may be subject to a penalty or bonus based on the caster's tradition. Situational or item aspects like "Summoner's Crystal" or "Rosecrutian Pentacle" may be tagged for a bonus on the Focus roll.

Step Four: Determine Effect and Backlash
The result of the Gather roll is used to determine effect. (For instance, a Superb Gather roll is considered Superb for comparison to difficulty.) The result of the Focus roll is used to determine if the ritual will cause a backlash consequence. If the Focus roll is equal to or greater than the Gather roll, then the ritual will not result in a Backlash consequence. A Gather roll that is greater than the Focus roll will result in backlash. See the GM section for more information.

Step Five: Tweak the Result
It is possible to manipulate shifts to generate a result that is more desirable to the caster. Any penalties can be reduced by spending Focus shifts. For instance, each -1 penalty assigned by the GM for range or complexity can be ignored by spending one shift. Casters may, if they wish, spend shifts of Focus until the Gather roll is one point higher than the Focus roll. Shifts may also be gained or spent by moving the casting time up or down on the time increment chart. Rituals are assumed to take "a few hours" by default.

Instant
A few moments
Half a minute
A minute
A few minutes
15 minutes
Half an hour
A few hours
An afternoon
A day
A few days
A week
A few weeks
A month
A few months
A season
Half a year
A year
A few years
A decade
A lifetime

Example:
Jessica is performing a Thaumaturgey ritual that will destroy a nearby derelict building. Her GM assigns a -3 penalty for the range of the ritual. Jessica rolls Gather and achieves a Superb result. Her GM informs her that this would be good enough to sufficiently damage the building except for the range penalty.

With this in mind, Jessica rolls her Focus roll and gets a Superb result. This is enough to prevent backlash, but not good enough to provide shifts. She tags the situational aspect "Pentacle of Power" to get a +2 bonus to the Focus roll, and spends these shifts to ignore 2 points of the penalty. She also extends the ritual's casting time from "a few hours" to "an afternoon" and spends the resulting shift to ignore the leftover -1.

This gives Jessica a Superb result and no Backlash consequence.

Notes for the GM
The trickiest part of this magic framework is setting difficulties. For many spells, difficulty can be based of the difficulty that would be used for a mundane skill check. If a ritualist wants to use a spell to repair an old, rusted-out car, use the same difficult you would use if a mechanic attempted the same task using their Engineering skill. However, you may want to increase the difficulty if the task would require tools or materials or if it would normally take longer than the default ritual length (A few hours.)

Backlash consequences are meant to model the "risk" of backfiring magic in a fun, story-based way. Backlash consequences are minor by default, but a spellcaster may have to "roll-up" to a more severe consequence. Stress boxes can never prevent a Backlash consequence.

Allow your players to pick their own consequences with guidance from you. Consider the ritualist's magical tradition when picking consequences. For instance, a demon summoner might find herself plagued by an "Imp on the Loose!" or an Alchemist might find himself turned into a "Toad." Remember that these consequences can be compelled or invoked like any other aspect.

Most ritualists will follow a particular magical tradition. You may wish to prepare these before play, or you might like to let players make up their own. Most traditions will have a +1 to either the Gather roll or the Focus roll and a -1 to the other. Traditions should also receive a +1 to both rolls in some narrow circumstance. For instance, Thaumaturge's might get a +1 when creating magical wards.

Quick Fix: Superpowers in Fate

When our ongoing campaign had to go on hiatus, my group and I discussed what we would like to play next. We decided to try Mutants and Masterminds. After a couple frustrating sessions of players not understanding how their powers worked and me faking rules decisions and generally BSing, we decided to convert our new superheros back to Fate. The following is a distillation of the rules I created for those characters.

First we created Aspects as usual. We gave everyone 5 aspects. I'd suggest focusing on dependent NPCs and secret identity issues for true superhero flavor.

Next, we generated Skills. Our group used a slightly modified SotC skills list, and each character had a Great skill pyramid. In addition, characters identified two of their skills as "meta-skills." A meta-skill could either be a skill they made up to define one of their super powers, (Superman could have a "Flight" skill), or a normal Skill that the character had superhuman ability with (Superman could have Meta-Might). Meta-normal skills received an automatic +2 on all checks. Other Meta-skills didn't get a bonus; their coolness made up for the difference.

We picked stunts out of the SotC book, or created our own from scratch. Many characters supported their powers using stunts. The Herculean Strength stunt is perfect for your super-brawny characters and a number of Athletics stunts are nice for speedsters.

I also house-ruled that characters didn't start with any stress boxes. High Endurance and Resolve ratings gave characters boxes, and they could also use these skills to actively defend. I hoped that reducing the number of boxes would let us get to Consequences faster. The decision to make Endurance an active defense was meant to emulate super-tough characters bouncing bullets of their chests.

This turned out to be surprisingly effective. The trickiest part was creating Meta-skills that effectively modeled the powers our characters already had. We determined there were a few different types of meta-skills.

• Meta-Normal Skills: These were the easiest. Our Iron-Man knock off had Meta-Might, and our Luck Manipulator had Meta-Athletics.
• Maneuver-Based Skills: Some characters had skills built around declaring aspects. Our weather controller used his "Weather Manipulation" skill to declare weather aspects on the scene; Our Luck Manipulator used his "Luck" skill to declare lucky coincidences.
• Super-Skills: These were the skills characters needed to make up to model their other powers. As a rule of thumb, I assumed that the Super-Skill should allow the character to do something they would normally be able to do with a device. Our Power Armor character took a "Blast" skill, which we treated as a Guns skill without requiring a gun. At the extreme, our Weather Controller took a Flight skill, which we treated as Pilot without requiring a Plane.
  

If people are interested, I can post the characters we made. I'm also happy to answer any questions if the mechanics are unclear.

Quick Fix: Adding Aspects to D&D

My group is still working on getting together to try out D&D 4E. (Attacking two quick build characters with five Kobalds on a chess board doesn't count, does it?) And since we haven't played yet, I'm withholding judgment on the system, but I must admit that I'm very excited about the new game. There is one house rule that I'm considering implementing. Anyone who's played Spirit of the Century or any other FATE game will tell you about the awesomeness of SotC's supermechanic: Aspects.

Aspects are, according to the SotC SRD, "Aspects can be relationships, beliefs, catchphrases, descriptors, items or pretty much anything else that paints a picture of the character," but Aspects can be much more. In my play, it's become clear that Aspects are the lazy man's mechanical shorthand for anything you need to model in the game. Your players will get a chance to tie they're "Burning Hate for the Empire" to the system, and you can show that "The Building's on Fire" without looking up fire damage in the DMG.

So, how can we go about tacking Aspects onto a system like D&D? In Fate 3.0, a character can "invoke" one of their Aspects by spending a fate point, or they can spend one to "tag" someone (or something) else's aspect.

A Fate invocation is worth a reroll or a +2, a tag is only worth a +2. In D20 terms, let players invoke their Aspects to reroll any D20 rolls. If you're generous, guarantee that rerolls are 11 or higher (add 10 to lower numbers.) My gut says that a +2 for tags would correspond to a D20 +5, but that's untested.

The other thing you'll need to figure out is how your characters will generate Aspects for their characters. While you could implement phase-based creation as seen in SotC, it might be easier to create a list of five or so questions and have your players generate an aspect for each.

• What was your background like?
• What motivates you?
• Who is your greatest enemy?
• Who is your best friend?
  
• What's a quote your character likes to say?

This is a very bare bones implementation that doesn't use core Fate concepts like declarations and assessment, but if Aspects work for your group, check out the SotC book for more groovy Aspecty goodness.

P.S. Aspects might be a useful stand in for players missing the Profession skill from third edition. A character with the "Sailor" Aspect can get the mechanical juice they're looking for when they try to tie knots, balance on a rolling deck, or socialize with some other scurvy dogs.

Tropes: Why Should Players Get All the Fun?

In a recent Amagi gambit, Levi Kornelsen provides a plug-in to mechanically encourage players to "play to the tropes" of the genre you're trying to emulate. Essentially, GM (or the group) creates a list of tropes that will reinforce the chosen genres. Levi recommends starting with about 10 tropes and adding as you go. When a player manages to maneuver to fulfill a trope (the character charms the reporter and "The Hero Gets the Girl" in the process) he gets a trope point. Trope points are the sort of manipulative currency we've become used to in games. Think drama points, fate points, plot points or action points. Stripped to its core, the system lets the GM bribe the players into playing to the genre, and there's nothing wrong with that.

This is a really cool concept that I know could improve my group's genre games, but why should players get all the fun? The Amagi article includes this paragraph about "Non-Player Tropes":
Not every good trope is meant for player action, or covered under these rules. If your game emulates video game RPGs, it’s a trope to include a Fire Dungeon and an Ice Dungeon, but those aren’t things players manage. Making a list of these to have on-hand is helpful; even if they aren’t part of these rules, they’re fun to have at hand.

But why shouldn't the rules support non-player tropes? Can't the players bribe the GM too?
Replace the "Non-Player Tropes" paragraph with this:

Not every good trope is meant for player action, or within the players' hands. If your game emulates video game RPGs, it’s a trope to include a Fire Dungeon and an Ice Dungeon, and if your game adheres to the conventions of the Noir genre, players should expect a sap to the back of the head, eventually. When creating the list of tropes for the group, help the players make their own list of Non-Player Tropes. These are things that the GM can do to support the genre.

Just like player tropes, there are two big rules for the non-player variety. One, the trope should support the genre. Two, the trope should be something you think will be fun, not something that will upset you if the GM chooses to employ it. If you think that a club to the back of the head will be fun, put it on the list. If you think it sounds like the worst kind of railroading, make sure it doesn't end up in the GM's repertoire.

If necessary, have players initial the tropes that they're willing to be involved with. Some tropes, like a crumbling rope bridge, will affect the whole group, but others, like getting possessed by a demon, can be isolated to only interested players.

Any player may Award the GM for acting out a trope. GMs can spend their trope points to Boost NPCs and, if the group likes, he may be limited to only placing bounties using these points. GMs may also use these points to bride players to play along with more undesirable non-player tropes. "I'll give one of my trope points to whoever's willing to be kidnapped"

A Thought Experiment: Mathless Dice Pools

I like dice pool mechanics. They're fun, and they're a nice change of pace from the die roll+stat+skill we see in most games. The system I'm most familiar with is White Wolf's Storyteller engine, particular the way it's implemented in New World of Darkness. For the unlikely gamer that isn't familiar with this kind of system, it works like this:

• A character's "dice pool" is a number of dice equal to their rating in the skill. So if you're playing NWoD, and you have 3 dots in Firearms and 2 dots in Dexterity, your rating is five
• When you attempt an action, you roll a number of dice equal to your rating. In NWoD, you roll d10's, so in the previous example, you would roll 5 d10's
• After you roll the dice, you count how many of the dice are "Successes." Coming back to our example, any dice that show an 8 or higher is a Success. The more Successes, the more Successful the roll. Get it? ;)

There's a lot to like about dice pool mechanics. For one thing, they're fun from a tactile perspective. In other words, rolling fistfuls of dice is fun; I'm not going to deny it. Dice pools are also cool for determining success and failure. After all, if you achieve a Success, you've succeeded (usually).

However, there are problems. One thing that I don't like much is the trouble a GM can have with determining the difficulty of a check. Basically, some tasks might require more than one Success. Seems like it might be easier to say a Success means you succeed, but then you have trouble when players attempt something that should be harder. Climbing the wall in the rain should be more diifcult than climbing it on a nice day, right?

And, because I'm really lazy, I admit that I wish it were easier to do the counting. 8's, 9's, and 10's are all successes, which means a little more time separating the dice. I think I've been spoiled by the fudge dice used by our current system of choice, Evil Hat's FATE engine.

So, here are some ideas I've have for a new spin on dice pools.

To fix my tiny nitpick with the word Success, there is a simple solution. We'll appropriate the word "Shift" from FATE. In FATE 3.0, a Shift is what get when your roll is higher than difficulty. If it's two higher, you get two shifts. So in this theoretical engine, when you roll your dice, you get a certain number of "shifts."

My next idea to make a really tight system is eliminating the disconnect between the number on the die, and its result in the game. The coolest thing would dice that directly indicated a shift without considering numbers. For instance, dice could have some sides dyed green. Each green die is a Shift. Easy, right? Customized dice are, unfortunately, not exactly cheap, so we'll have to settle for something else. The other thing to fiddle with, is how often a success occurs. In NWoD, someone with a rating of one succeeds 3/10 of the time. I could almost replicate this be rolling fudge dice and considering +'s shifts and discounting -'s and blanks.

The other thing that appeals to me is using coins or tokens. They're easier to come by or make, and there's something endearing about the idea of having only two sides. The tokens would show the Shift side or the Not Shift side. Normal coins could easily stand in if we assume that Heads are Shifts (or vice versa; as long as everyone's counting the same thing, we should be okay.)

The last thing that would create the ideal Dice Pool system is an easy way to handle easy and difficult situations. The most intuitive thing to do would be to consider an anti-shift. For argumnet's sake, call it a Neg. A neg is equal to negative one shift. The harder a task is, the more negs it has. For a really easy way to run the game, the GM could have Neg and Shift tokens. When a player attempted an action, a GM could pick up a number of tokens appropriate to the situation and throw them in the pile with the results of the check. "The dice show 5 shifts, but there are 3 Neg tokens, so I achieved 2 shifts." If a roll were especially easy, the GM would show some Shift tokens that could be counted as usual.

So to summarize:

• A player throws a number of coins equal to their rating.
• They separate out the Shifts.
• This total of Shifts may be increased or decreased by Shift or Neg tokens.
• In the end, one Shift is a success; more than that indicate that the check went especially well, and would likely have other mechanical advantages.

What do people think about Dice Pool Mechanics? Any dislikes? Would those dislikes be adressed by a system like this?