Totally Guy
2010-05-01, 02:57 AM
I have been consistently impressed with this system for our near weekly gaming sessions.
Core mechanics:
Every roll matters. There's never a "Nothing Happens" result. Players state their intent for what they want their roll to do, GM states the difficulty as well as what'll happen on a failed roll. The player gathers up their dice pool and hopes to roll as many successes as the GM stated. There are ways to improve you chances by getting help or using some related knowledge. The result is binding. No re-test is allowed until circumstances legitimately change. GM decided failure consequences should be a complication and not a roadblock, this is probably the hardest thing to master as the GM.
This was a completely improvised scene that happened in our game.
A player wanted to sneak into a wizard's tower. I ruled that it was an open test, so the more successes the better. To get to the top he'd need 4 successes. Ground floor access 3 and just sneaking around the gardens required 2. The player rolled 3 successes so he could freely sneak around the base of the tower and the gardens. If he wanted to go any higher he'd need to think of something new because if he went up the stairs he'd be automatically spotted. No further roll, he'd already done that.
Advancement:
Advancement is handled roll by roll. To advance you need to have difficult dice rolls, ones that'll rarely succeed or can never succeed (it's not so bad when you know the failure consequences beforehand). But that can be countered. If you spend you Artha (hero point type things) you can mitigate the hopeless nature of the required rolls. How do you gain Artha? Roleplay. You choose your beliefs, character instincts and traits and when you play them you are rewarded for them.
In my game PC Bob the Wizard has terrible instincts. "When intimidated drop prone"? This causes him all kinds of trouble but every time he does it he gets artha. Another PC, Harris the Guard had other instincts, "Always start combat in aggressive stance". This rarely causes trouble (and so doesn't award artha) but instead gives a decent advantage in a fight, without the instinct that's not allowed!
Another PC Bernhard the Knight has a belief "I will kill Reece Auburn". When he did that, and when he pursued it, he was rewarded.
The GM's job is to challenge the Beliefs. The Beliefs shouldn't follow a GM plot. The plot is the character acting on their beliefs and the GM challenging them.
It requires proactive players. It doesn't necessarily mean a reactive GM though...
Character Generation:
Character generation is one with a lifepath system. You choose where you were born, Peasant, City, Nobility, Slavery etc. and then you plot out where you went after that. Each path give you access to certain skills and traits, they all have a resource value, a number of years to add onto your life, and some boost your stat points. You can often struggle to get exactly what you want, which I think puts people off, it forces you to choose what is important to you from the start.
I had a player that wanted to make the best surgeon he could with 4 lifepaths. He picked all the Nobility, formal education, and doctor things and ended up with a high Surgery skill. I pointed out a way to make a guy with a crazy good surgery skill by use of a trait called Touch of the Devil. Unfortunately with this trait he would have had a very hard life full of oppression and adversity. Born into Slavery, press-ganged onto a ship where by his devil hands he'd become the ship's doctor.
Eventually we went with the Noble surgeon for his greater versatility and player's preferred pompous role.
Social Mechanics:
Controversial! Why not just roleplay it out?
In Burning Wheel an argument is handled by structuring the argument you intend to roleplay. You script out 3 things you are going to say and classify them as particular social constructs. Are you making your point? Avoiding the topic? Using your weighty ego to get what you want? Waiting to rubbish their argument?
The other person arguing does the same. The social constructs play out. So if your opponent is trying to make their point and you are trying to avoid talking about it the dice are rolled to see what happened.
This continues until somebody runs out of points and their ego caves. The winner get what they wanted but the loses usually receives a compromise based on the damage they did to their opponent's argument.
Combat Mechanics:
Combat is chaotic (yet totally organised)! There's no hyperawareness of where everybody is.
You script out your actions in combat. You might try to Strike someone, Avoid and dodge out the way, Block with a shield and stab simultaneously, Feint and gut a defender...
The actions resolve simultaneously and the dice rolled are depend on what action you each chose to do. Clever combat tactics can occasionally outwit an opponent, the underdog can have teeth.
Rather than hit points any damage you take does a wound. How great a wound? Well that depends on the character. A yeti would be irritated by that dagger stab, a fairy, cut in half. As you take wounds all your stats drop at once. Once one hits zero you go down. So you dumped your mental stats? Oops, you go down quicker.
You can effectively beat someone to submission. They can't argue well with stat loss.
There is no true magical healing so you'd better be fighting for something important.
Wises and Circles:
These are my favourite specific mechanics. The players can tell you game world facts with specific knowledge skills called wises. The GM sets the obstacle and a successful test canonises it. It's not allowed to contradict anything though and a GM can say if it contradicts a key fact from his notes.
In the tower scene, Bob the wizard was stuck on the ground floor of another wizard's tower unable to ascend due to guards. He wanted to use his Wizard-wise skill to say "Everyone knows that wizards have labs underneath their towers." One successful test later he was in the secret lab causing mischief.
Circles is the same thing but for finding new and useful NPCs.
Magic:
Magic has a cost here. Classic sorcery requires the character to have the Gifted trait. After casting a spell the wizard has to test his Fort stat to see if he temporarily loses dice from his Fort stat. Fort hitting zero will knock the wizard out. Magic can do some amazing things, flatten cities, sink ships, enhance and create things.
Elves have their own song magic. But I've not seen it in play.
Setting:
There isn't one.
That's a lie. Although it took me a while to discover it.
The mechanics are the setting. The lifepaths define the people you meet. The magic rules show the extent and influence that magic has. The skills define the tech level. It's all grounded in enough verisimilitude that it comes down to deciding what rules/races you want to lose (we play without faith magic) that define alterations to the setting.
It's kind of bad for balance though. Elves tend to be better than humans and orcs do no nurture their young. But in practice you can just about balance it by saying Humans can have X lifepaths, Elves X-1, Orcs X+1.
I'd be pleased to answer any questions.
Core mechanics:
Every roll matters. There's never a "Nothing Happens" result. Players state their intent for what they want their roll to do, GM states the difficulty as well as what'll happen on a failed roll. The player gathers up their dice pool and hopes to roll as many successes as the GM stated. There are ways to improve you chances by getting help or using some related knowledge. The result is binding. No re-test is allowed until circumstances legitimately change. GM decided failure consequences should be a complication and not a roadblock, this is probably the hardest thing to master as the GM.
This was a completely improvised scene that happened in our game.
A player wanted to sneak into a wizard's tower. I ruled that it was an open test, so the more successes the better. To get to the top he'd need 4 successes. Ground floor access 3 and just sneaking around the gardens required 2. The player rolled 3 successes so he could freely sneak around the base of the tower and the gardens. If he wanted to go any higher he'd need to think of something new because if he went up the stairs he'd be automatically spotted. No further roll, he'd already done that.
Advancement:
Advancement is handled roll by roll. To advance you need to have difficult dice rolls, ones that'll rarely succeed or can never succeed (it's not so bad when you know the failure consequences beforehand). But that can be countered. If you spend you Artha (hero point type things) you can mitigate the hopeless nature of the required rolls. How do you gain Artha? Roleplay. You choose your beliefs, character instincts and traits and when you play them you are rewarded for them.
In my game PC Bob the Wizard has terrible instincts. "When intimidated drop prone"? This causes him all kinds of trouble but every time he does it he gets artha. Another PC, Harris the Guard had other instincts, "Always start combat in aggressive stance". This rarely causes trouble (and so doesn't award artha) but instead gives a decent advantage in a fight, without the instinct that's not allowed!
Another PC Bernhard the Knight has a belief "I will kill Reece Auburn". When he did that, and when he pursued it, he was rewarded.
The GM's job is to challenge the Beliefs. The Beliefs shouldn't follow a GM plot. The plot is the character acting on their beliefs and the GM challenging them.
It requires proactive players. It doesn't necessarily mean a reactive GM though...
Character Generation:
Character generation is one with a lifepath system. You choose where you were born, Peasant, City, Nobility, Slavery etc. and then you plot out where you went after that. Each path give you access to certain skills and traits, they all have a resource value, a number of years to add onto your life, and some boost your stat points. You can often struggle to get exactly what you want, which I think puts people off, it forces you to choose what is important to you from the start.
I had a player that wanted to make the best surgeon he could with 4 lifepaths. He picked all the Nobility, formal education, and doctor things and ended up with a high Surgery skill. I pointed out a way to make a guy with a crazy good surgery skill by use of a trait called Touch of the Devil. Unfortunately with this trait he would have had a very hard life full of oppression and adversity. Born into Slavery, press-ganged onto a ship where by his devil hands he'd become the ship's doctor.
Eventually we went with the Noble surgeon for his greater versatility and player's preferred pompous role.
Social Mechanics:
Controversial! Why not just roleplay it out?
In Burning Wheel an argument is handled by structuring the argument you intend to roleplay. You script out 3 things you are going to say and classify them as particular social constructs. Are you making your point? Avoiding the topic? Using your weighty ego to get what you want? Waiting to rubbish their argument?
The other person arguing does the same. The social constructs play out. So if your opponent is trying to make their point and you are trying to avoid talking about it the dice are rolled to see what happened.
This continues until somebody runs out of points and their ego caves. The winner get what they wanted but the loses usually receives a compromise based on the damage they did to their opponent's argument.
Combat Mechanics:
Combat is chaotic (yet totally organised)! There's no hyperawareness of where everybody is.
You script out your actions in combat. You might try to Strike someone, Avoid and dodge out the way, Block with a shield and stab simultaneously, Feint and gut a defender...
The actions resolve simultaneously and the dice rolled are depend on what action you each chose to do. Clever combat tactics can occasionally outwit an opponent, the underdog can have teeth.
Rather than hit points any damage you take does a wound. How great a wound? Well that depends on the character. A yeti would be irritated by that dagger stab, a fairy, cut in half. As you take wounds all your stats drop at once. Once one hits zero you go down. So you dumped your mental stats? Oops, you go down quicker.
You can effectively beat someone to submission. They can't argue well with stat loss.
There is no true magical healing so you'd better be fighting for something important.
Wises and Circles:
These are my favourite specific mechanics. The players can tell you game world facts with specific knowledge skills called wises. The GM sets the obstacle and a successful test canonises it. It's not allowed to contradict anything though and a GM can say if it contradicts a key fact from his notes.
In the tower scene, Bob the wizard was stuck on the ground floor of another wizard's tower unable to ascend due to guards. He wanted to use his Wizard-wise skill to say "Everyone knows that wizards have labs underneath their towers." One successful test later he was in the secret lab causing mischief.
Circles is the same thing but for finding new and useful NPCs.
Magic:
Magic has a cost here. Classic sorcery requires the character to have the Gifted trait. After casting a spell the wizard has to test his Fort stat to see if he temporarily loses dice from his Fort stat. Fort hitting zero will knock the wizard out. Magic can do some amazing things, flatten cities, sink ships, enhance and create things.
Elves have their own song magic. But I've not seen it in play.
Setting:
There isn't one.
That's a lie. Although it took me a while to discover it.
The mechanics are the setting. The lifepaths define the people you meet. The magic rules show the extent and influence that magic has. The skills define the tech level. It's all grounded in enough verisimilitude that it comes down to deciding what rules/races you want to lose (we play without faith magic) that define alterations to the setting.
It's kind of bad for balance though. Elves tend to be better than humans and orcs do no nurture their young. But in practice you can just about balance it by saying Humans can have X lifepaths, Elves X-1, Orcs X+1.
I'd be pleased to answer any questions.