[freeroleplay] New Fringe Mechanic Take 2

[Troy Truchon]

On 7/12/06, Ricardo Gladwell <president at freeroleplay.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Jerry,
>
> It's good to see you back on the list. Thought we'd lost you. Thanks for
> you thoughtful remarks on new mechanic.
>
> On Tue, 2006-07-11 at 09:44 -0700, Jerry Stratton wrote:
> > 1) You might be able to make it look less complicated by not using
> > negative numbers.
>
> I'm not sure the complication is not warranted here: its a useful
> indicator as to whether the trait belongs in the failure or success
> pool. Is there some other means to signify which is a 'good' or a 'bad'
> modifier?
>
> >  Since you've divided "negative" modifiers out into their
> > own roll, all of your modifiers are really positive. You  ought to be able
> > to come up with cool names for success and failure so that "negative"
> > attributes are really failure attributes, i.e., things the character isn't
> > good at. For example, instead of Agility -2, a character would have a
> > Clumsiness of 2. For things where clumsiness matters, that attribute adds
> > to their failure pool.
>
> Indeed, the new mechanic turns everything into a roll modifier. I can
> imagine a Fudge-like system where, instead of fixed attributes,
> characters have a free-form series of descriptive qualifiers each with a
> score. Each time a players rolls they collect up all the appropriate
> qualifiers and add them to the success or failure pool depending on
> whether they are bonuses or penalties for the roll.
>
> Instead of having negative numbers players interpret the traits to
> either be helpful or obstacles depending on the situation. For example,
> a character with Charisma 3 and Noble 2 would roll both traits in a
> charisma roll to convince the King an army masses on his borders, while
> the Noble trait might be considered to be a negative modifier trying to
> convince a group of revolting peasants.
>
> I'm not sure if this is the system I want Fringe to be though, although
> it could certainly make an excellent free content roleplaying game if
> someone wants to take the idea and run with it.

I may do just that. Its like the exact opposite of my original idea,
everything is an attribute rather than everything being a skill. As I
said originally I have been looking for a rules lite system for a
post-cyberpunk campaign. Quite frankly most near future settings don't
really satisfy me because you get bogged down with the technology.
Half the shadowrun supplements I've seen are half weapons catalogue. I
just want a simple rule system where I can tell the players what the
gun is on the fly without piles of stats for every imaginable weapon
they could want.

-- 
Troy J. Truchon
Computer Service Technician