Sunday 24 August 2014

Doing Things 1

One of my biggest challenges was the mechanics to be used - without knowing how things are done, it's difficult to make characters.

My basic mechanics choices have all been done before, which is Ok as I'm not trying to be radically different, and could be summed as :-



  • xDy + modifiers or less - roll a limited number of dice to get a number less than attribute or skill
  • xDy + modifiers v z - roll a limited number of dice to get a number more than the difficulty
  • skill/attributeD6 v z - roll a number of dice equal to attribute/skill to get a number more than the difficulty
  • D% + modifiers or less - roll D% to get a number less than skill or attribute
  • D% + modifiers v z - roll D% to get a number more than difficulty
  • xDy + skill + attribute + modifier v z - roll a limited number of dice, adding a skill number and an attribute number to get more than the difficulty


Phew, that's just some of the choices.


Looking at the choices, helps sort skill and attribute values.


For instance, if I want to keep things simple and use 3d6 to do things, my range is 3-18 and characters should have a value of approx 10-12 to be able to succeed roughly 1/2 the time.


That means either attributes and skills have to be in the range of 3-18 [probably 1-20 would be easier], so doing something can be done by rolling less than the attribute or skill on a 3d6 roll, or adding a skill number and an attribute number together would produce such a number.


In a similar way, if attributes and skills are to be rated on a scale of 1-6 [with 1 being the lowest, 3 being average and 6 being the highest], then an average charter would have 3+3 = 6 as his average have to do things.


Not so good for rolling 3d6 and trying to roll less than the accumulated number [6 or less on a roll of 3d6 is tough], but could be done by using a roll of 1d10 [6 or less on a roll of 1d10 is not too hard].


Rolling 3+3 = 6 d6 dice is another option to do things, where the results of each d6 are added to end with a total more than the difficulty.


Looking through the options above, I think I'd like to use 2d10 or 3d6 for characters to do things - it keeps the number of dice low, keeps the number used for doing things low and that should make it fast to get things done.

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