Building THAC0: The Game

[JBPuffin]

At its absolute most basic, Proficiency Check is a game where each player has a list of "Proficiencies," each with a To Perform Difficulty 0 number ("Target") and Effect Dice rolled when beat your TPD0 on a d20 roll; you chip off some of the target's appropriate Track, whether it be Health on a vicious dragon, Feet on a mountain, or Stubbornness on a merchant you're haggling with. Once their Track reaches 0 or less, you've won - dragon's dead or unconscious, mountain's climbed, merchant's beaten. Hurray, you win!

Of course, you have Tracks, too - Health, if nothing else.

Beyond this, I'm not sure what to do. I'd like a generic system to spawn from this, but since right now all I have is an idea for a mechanic and nothing concrete in the way of numbers I'm really at a loss.

Still, here's a hypothetical example:
Jack has Climbing as a proficiency: 12+, 2d4+1. He wants to climb Mt. Wonderous, which has a Height track of 15 (some vague units go here). Since it's such a hazardous climb, he has to climb it in three rolls or he'll break something and be stuck in the hospital for a while.

His d20 rolls, via iPhone App: 14, 1, 17. Two out of three...although that 1 takes 4 Health off his 10-point Track. He got some distance, then cracked his shin on a particularly painful slip, but he kept going. Now, how'd he do on his distance...

His Effect Dice, which we'll just add together: 3,1,2,2. Plus 2, that's only a 10. He gets two-thirds of the way up before his broken shin forces him to call for a chopper, which fortunately takes him off the mountain and saves his life.

Building Character(s)
I want it to be easy to construct archetypes, but not impossible to create mechanically-sound abominations of theurgy and basketweaving. To that end, I want a measure of point buy and a measure of feature picking. 5e did Backgrounds how I feel they should be done, specifically with the "Create Your Own" system that came before any of the backgrounds were even listed, so there will be an equivalent. I don't want classes, and the system's light enough I don't think that there's much of a need for that unless Proficiencies just get out of hand.

Thinking about it, though? There should be things like the non-roll proficiencies in ACKS (aka, my major inspiration for this idea). So, like...
Say that our friend Jack had an "Ability" (non-Proficiency, non-Track part of his character sheet) called Always Have a Plan, which lets him reroll 1s on his Proficiency checks when he takes time in-character to plan his actions. He rerolls the 1 and gets a 12 - just enough! Rolling his ED, he gets a 6 - he did crash his shin into the mountain at one point, but he remembered to pack the stuff for a splint and makes it to the top! Hooray for the protagonist!

So, guys and gals...what should I do with this thing? Thanks for any ideas, and feel free to steal the base for other stuff. So long as the idea proliferates, who does the proliferating isn't my problem :smallbiggrin:.

[Sooth]

That's pretty neat and seems like a workable foundation.

I wonder if you may want to create a few standardized track or pseudo-health bars for player characters or NPCs to use. Maybe something like:

Health or even Stamina (Stamina is of a bit broader scope than Health, you can use Stamina as the same thing as Health but also use Stamina as a track resource for things like running a marathon, where failure doesn't cause you to actually get wounded)
Focus (mental concentration and aptitude; when it runs out, you're frazzled and can't effectively do tasks requiring concentration)
Will (Determination and stubbornness; when it runs out, you're spiritually/emotionally exhausted and unable to press your resolve onto others or situations)

Then it's worth asking, what can be added to it? Where can you go from there? Many systems have a "push" mechanic where you can utilize a limited resource to increase your chance at something. The Numenera system has an interesting, different way of doing that. Numenera uses 3 stat pools that are also your health pools, and you can spend points from your pools to increase your odds of success at a test. You have to declare spending these points before you roll, and you're literally spending your HP/other kinds of Hp to succeed at... something that would probably cost you HP/other kinds of HP if you failed.... so it's a calculated risk. And the system also has a stat called Effort which governs/limits how *much* you can spend to increase your success on a given roll.

You could also do a "Degrees of success"-like mechanic, where if you beat the DC by a certain amount, you get to apply more points toward the Track -- like maybe Jack would get to roll an additional 2d4+2 for rolling a 17 when he only needed 12.

Let'see... some systems have a codified way to "Raise the Stakes", where you can increase your chance at succeeding but put more on the line for doing so. For example, Jack might decide to keep climbing beyond 3 checks but suffer greater Health loss and peril to himself for doing so. I guess you don't really need a mechanic for that sort of thing you could just handle it with on-the-fly DMing but whatevs.

[Sooth]

Another question you may want to ask is how you want player defenses/reactions to be handled in the system, like for example....

If Sir Dunric is fighting an ogre, does the ogre roll attack rolls against Sir Dunric like in classic tabletop? Or does Sir Dunric make Dodge Proficiency rolls to avoid getting hit (without the enemy making attack rolls -- the sort of thing you get when you go with "players make all the rolls")...

... or does the game reactively apply Track loss for player failures, without adding separate rolls into the mix? For example, let's say that *all Sir Dunric does* in the fight, is roll Proficiency checks to fight it -- he doesn't need to "dodge" the ogre. But when Sir Dunric fails to roll high enough to deal Track damage, it is flavored that the Ogre hits him back and he loses Health for it (similar to what happened with Jack rolling a 1 for climbing a mountain).

[JBPuffin]

That's pretty neat and seems like a workable foundation.

I wonder if you may want to create a few standardized track or pseudo-health bars for player characters or NPCs to use. Maybe something like:

Health or even Stamina (Stamina is of a bit broader scope than Health, you can use Stamina as the same thing as Health but also use Stamina as a track resource for things like running a marathon, where failure doesn't cause you to actually get wounded)
Focus (mental concentration and aptitude; when it runs out, you're frazzled and can't effectively do tasks requiring concentration)
Will (Determination and stubbornness; when it runs out, you're spiritually/emotionally exhausted and unable to press your resolve onto others or situations)

Then it's worth asking, what can be added to it? Where can you go from there? Many systems have a "push" mechanic where you can utilize a limited resource to increase your chance at something. The Numenera system has an interesting, different way of doing that. Numenera uses 3 stat pools that are also your health pools, and you can spend points from your pools to increase your odds of success at a test. You have to declare spending these points before you roll, and you're literally spending your HP/other kinds of Hp to succeed at... something that would probably cost you HP/other kinds of HP if you failed.... so it's a calculated risk. And the system also has a stat called Effort which governs/limits how *much* you can spend to increase your success on a given roll.

You could also do a "Degrees of success"-like mechanic, where if you beat the DC by a certain amount, you get to apply more points toward the Track -- like maybe Jack would get to roll an additional 2d4+2 for rolling a 17 when he only needed 12.

Let'see... some systems have a codified way to "Raise the Stakes", where you can increase your chance at succeeding but put more on the line for doing so. For example, Jack might decide to keep climbing beyond 3 checks but suffer greater Health loss and peril to himself for doing so. I guess you don't really need a mechanic for that sort of thing you could just handle it with on-the-fly DMing but whatevs.

Good call on Stamina instead of Health, and Will and Focus work as classic Tracks as well. I know for sure that I'll have an Advantage-type mechanic, ala 5e DnD, and Degrees of Success are something I want, but I hadn't really thought about a push system or stake system. Maybe they'll all end up a part of it, one way or the other...


Another question you may want to ask is how you want player defenses/reactions to be handled in the system, like for example....

If Sir Dunric is fighting an ogre, does the ogre roll attack rolls against Sir Dunric like in classic tabletop? Or does Sir Dunric make Dodge Proficiency rolls to avoid getting hit (without the enemy making attack rolls -- the sort of thing you get when you go with "players make all the rolls")...

... or does the game reactively apply Track loss for player failures, without adding separate rolls into the mix? For example, let's say that *all Sir Dunric does* in the fight, is roll Proficiency checks to fight it -- he doesn't need to "dodge" the ogre. But when Sir Dunric fails to roll high enough to deal Track damage, it is flavored that the Ogre hits him back and he loses Health for it (similar to what happened with Jack rolling a 1 for climbing a mountain).

The hike definitely was a beta in all senses of the word - beyond the idea that every plot-important task boils down to a series of whittling away at Tracks or using mad logic skillz, I have very little in the way of structure for this. I do know that I'd like for the GM to never have to roll the dice if he/she doesn't want to - players roll their dice for their actions, but the GM can skip them. There are a couple of ways to do that, of course - give each character a "Dodge" Proficiency, make damage a cost of failure, etc - and I think both should be present in the system.

Here we go - set piece moments are done like combat in later editions of Dungeons and Dragons (namely, gridded, measured in rounds, and pseudo-tactical), whereas more trivial things are handled by Proficiency Checks and Tracks alone. GMs could completely ignore the tactical version and only use the baseline of "Take damage when you fail and every X rolls" for combat if they so desired. So, for the Ogre example - in the "mini-game" setup, Dunric and the Ogre act in initiative order, walking around a with both making attack rolls against the other's Defense Class, dealing Stamina damage, and utilizing Abilities (Shield Bashes, Rock Tosses, etc). In the "basic" setup, Dunric is rolling his weapon Proficiency against the ogre's Defense Class and dealing Stamina damage, taking damage in turn whenever he fails by a certain margin and automatically every so often (less damage but more often the more people are on his team, and vice versa). Design would focus on the basic version, then move to working on a grid add-on once the core mechanics seem solid.

[Sooth]

Here we go - set piece moments are done like combat in later editions of Dungeons and Dragons (namely, gridded, measured in rounds, and pseudo-tactical), whereas more trivial things are handled by Proficiency Checks and Tracks alone. GMs could completely ignore the tactical version and only use the baseline of "Take damage when you fail and every X rolls" for combat if they so desired. So, for the Ogre example - in the "mini-game" setup, Dunric and the Ogre act in initiative order, walking around a with both making attack rolls against the other's Defense Class, dealing Stamina damage, and utilizing Abilities (Shield Bashes, Rock Tosses, etc). In the "basic" setup, Dunric is rolling his weapon Proficiency against the ogre's Defense Class and dealing Stamina damage, taking damage in turn whenever he fails by a certain margin and automatically every so often (less damage but more often the more people are on his team, and vice versa). Design would focus on the basic version, then move to working on a grid add-on once the core mechanics seem solid.

Slightly off-topic, Dungeon World comes to mind. It's a system that functions pretty much entirely like what you put forth for the basic version - where everything - even the narrative - happens in response to the players' choices and rolls, and the game just builds off of that concept. May be a font of inspiration/things to hack apart and borrow, if you're not already familiar with it.

I think you have the right idea starting Basic and then building up to a Minigame afterwards, giving GMs the option of whether they want the extra mechanics and whistles. You could later create what is essentially one highly versatile, customizable Minigame "Combat" system that can be reskinned to be basically anything -- turn that "Rock Toss" into a "Piercing Rebuttal" when you do a debate/social combat, or whatever. Good times.

[JBPuffin]

Dungeon World as in the Apocalypse Word game? I have the latter, and I'll look into the former when I get a chance.

Whoa...okay, I took a peak at the SRD, and now I know I'll do some deep-tissue digging later. Man, that looks cool...