[freeroleplay] [Fringe] New Mechanic

[Troy Truchon]

On 6/26/06, Ricardo Gladwell <president at freeroleplay.org> wrote:
> > > For each action,
> > > the GM declares which attribute and a skill are appropriate, and sets a
> > > difficulty for the role between 1 and 5 (difficulty 0 rolls should not
> > > require a roll: they are so trivial all characters succeed).
> >
> > This does limit you to only 5 difficulty levels. What do these represent?
> > It seems limited for a gritty and realistic system, but more suited to a
> > high fantasy type game which is what I think Fringe is aimed at.
>
> You're correct, a better system would be where most rolls do not have a
> difficulty by default: as long as you score one success you succeed at
> an average roll. Difficulties would be optional for extended actions or
> hard tasks only.
>
> > > The dice pool for the roll is equal to the characters ability score. The
> > > target for the roll is equal to the characters skill score. Roll
> > > modifiers are add to or subtract from the dice pool.
> >
> > Why? The difficulty is set by the number of required successes, so
> > any modifiers should modify this, not modify the number of dice rolled.
> > Having both complicates the decision of where to stick a modifier.
>
> There's probably no reason. I feel modifying the dice pool rather than
> the difficulty allows the GM to separate the external factors
> (difficulty modifiers) from the various character/internal factors (roll
> modifiers) in his mind. Also, a +2 bonus to a roll sounds better than a
> -2 bonus to difficulty.
>
> > > The player then grabs a number of d5 equivalent to the dice pool and
> > > rolls them. Each dice _equal to or less than_ the roll target counts as
> > > a success. In other words, it is better to roll low.
> >
> > A character with a skill of 5 will always succeed, so never needs to
> > roll. Is this what you want? How rare would you envisage a skill level
> > of 5 to be?
>
> Whoops, you're correct: this leads onto completely a new problem. If I
> compare rolls 'equal to or less than' it means characters with a skill
> score of 5 never fail, but if I compare 'less than' then characters with
> a skill score of 0 always fail! Ouch, not sure what to do about that?
> Thoughts?
>
> > > Players then add up their successes and this is the result of their
> > > roll. If the result is greater than or equal to the difficulty they
> > > succeed. If it is less than the difficulty they fail.
> >
> > Would you have degrees of success?
>
> Degree of success/failure could be calculated when needed, taking the
> difference between successes and the difficulty
>
> > How do people combine their skills?
>
> I was going to use rules for "extended tasks", or challenges as they are
> called. In challenges characters must accumulate a number of successes
> to complete a task. Characters can cooperate on challenges, and their
> individual successes are pooled together to reach the target difficulty.
>
> > > Problems
> > >
> > > There are a couple of problems with the above. Most importantly, only
> > > characters with attribute score at least equal to the roll difficulty
> > > have any chance of beating the odds.
> >
> > This is a biggie. There's two fixes I can think of:
> >
> > 1) Allow re-rolls. So a 6 is a success, plus roll again. This allows
> >    any number of successes. Possibly reduce the skill in the 2nd and
> >    subsequent rolls if you want to give an advantage to high skill
> >    characters (just noticed you mentioned this one).
>
> That's a good idea, it might also solve the "less than or equal to"
> problem above.
>
> > 2) Allow a character to reduce their skill in exchange for extra dice.
> >    This enables highly skilled characters to be really good.
>
> I love this idea. Alternatively, player's could also drop their
> attributes to raise their skill. Not sure what to call it: trading?
> Shifting? Weighting?
>
> > You possibly need to think about what the numbers represent. Is a
> > strength of 5 an olympic weightlifter, or is it Superman? If a
> > typical professional is never going to see a difficulty above 3
> > in their working life, then an average attribute or 2 is probably
> > reasonable (there will be some tasks an average person will always
> > fail at). However, if 3 is merely 'moderately hard', then the
> > mechanic as it stands has a problem.
>
> A score of 2 is average for attributes.
>
> > I'd like to see what the numbers really mean to get an idea of how
> > well it would work in a real game, but otherwise it seems reasonably
> > simple and workable.
>
> Sorry, I should have made that clearer: 0-5 represents the human scale,
> with scores of 6+ being superhuman abilities. So, a gold medal olympic
> weightlifter would be 5, whereas Superman would probably be 10.
>
> How do you feel the new mechanic compare to the existing one (roll 1d10
> + attribute + skill vs. difficulty)?

I much prefer the new mechanic with a few modifications. Firstly lets
just call it a 1d6, makes things more sensible. The general rule could
be that a character rolls (attribute)D6 and compares it too his skill.
A 6 is an automatic failure, a 1 is a success and a reroll. Anything
equal to or less than their skill level is a success. The actual
number of needed successes is one for a common task and up to the GM
for anything more complex. The maximum attribute score for an
unmodified baseline is 5, the maximum skill is 5 period. To sort out
the unskilled you'd have a concept of an appropriate knowledge. Namely
a caveman has no success with a ford focus and has a skill of 0,
whereas a person from our time has a skill of 1 in driving, just
because of cultural familiarity. Similarly a person from the middle
ages may have a medical skill of 5 whereas your own doctor has a skill
of 4. But the appropriateness comes into play here as well meaning
dependant on the task trying to be achieved and the tools available
the 21st century doctor would need fewer successes to accomplish the
task, and would probably have better results. Also keep in mind that
in a realistic medieval setting even a successful procedure will
probably kill the patient.

> Kind regards...
>
> --
> Ricardo Gladwell
> President, Free RPG Community
> http://www.freeroleplay.org/
> president at freeroleplay.org
>
>
>
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-- 
Troy J. Truchon
Computer Service Technician