[freeroleplay] New Fringe Mechanic Take 2

[Troy Truchon]

On 7/12/06, Troy Truchon <capheind at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

So basically everything is an opposed roll? In such a system your
failure pool could add to the success pool of your opponent and vice
versa. You could also have the GM roll the failure pool when there is
no opposing party except nature and yourself. I like this idea.

> > 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
>


-- 
Troy J. Truchon
Computer Service Technician