[freeroleplay] New Fringe Mechanic Take 2

[Ricardo Gladwell]

Hi All,

I've been thinking about mechanics and came up with yet another take on
dice pools. The problem with dice pool mechanics is that they don't do
degree of failure very well. This new system hopefully gets around this
by dividing the dice pool into success and failure die.

Too complicated? Too simple? To gimmicky? Thoughts?

Mechanic
--------

Attributes range from -2 to +2 for normal humans, and skills range from
0 to +5. Whenever the games master determines that your character is
attempting an action that has a chance of success or failure make an
action roll as follows:

     1. Determine the most relevant attribute and skill and any
        modifiers that apply for the action. Positive values (including
        positive attributes, skills, advantages and modifiers) are added
        to your success dice pool, negative values (including negative
        attributes and disadvantages) are added to the failure dice
        pool. 
     2. Roll a number of die equal to your success dice pool and failure
        dice pool. Use different coloured dice for each pool.[1] 
     3. Every roll of 4, 5 or 6 in your success dice pool is a success,
        every roll of 4, 5 or 6 in your failure dice pool is a failure.
        If you scored more successes than failures, you succeed at the
        action. 

If the action is particularly challenging the game master may assign a
negative modifier to the roll increasing the failure dice pool.

If you score more failures than successes you not only fail the action,
but have a critical failure.

For example, a thief is attempting to climb a treacherous cliff face.
The GM determines the player must roll Agility and Acrobatics versus a
difficulty of -3. The thief has Agility +1 and Acrobatics +3. He uses a
rope giving him an equipment bonus of +2. This gives him 6 for his
success die pool and 3 in his failure die pool.

The thief rolls a 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, and 5 in his success die pool, given
him 2 successes. He rolls a 2, 2 and 6 in his failure pool giving him 1
failure. The thief scored more successes than failures so succeeds at
the action.

Kind regards...

[1] This is optional: if they don't have coloured die players can simply
roll the success die pool first and then the failure die pool.

-- 
Ricardo Gladwell
President, Free RPG Community
http://www.freeroleplay.org/
president at freeroleplay.org