GaelofDarkness
2020-05-24, 06:47 PM
I posted nearly a year ago about this WIP Dice Mechanic (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?592680-WIP-Dice-Mechanic) where number affected degree of success but colour determind approach. It was fun to play around with but ultimately felt pretty clunky at the table so it was shelved until I dug it back up and shot some new ideas around with friends. This incarnation is pretty different but still based on using colour to make rolls about more than just degree of success. This time it looks like it might be more workable - so I'd really appreciate your evaluations and critiques. My group's comfort zone is heroic fantasy but this idea is pretty generic and could apply to many genres.
The system uses one d20 each in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple - six total - called the colourful dice. Any other combination of six distinct d20s could work too. For entangled rolls (see below) you'll also need some black/white/grey d20s called the colourless dice. I'm aware that this is a pretty unreasonable number of d20s but who among us has kept their collection reasonable. :smallwink:
The Basic Roll
Roll three of the six colourful dice.
Choose one die for its colour and one for its number - BUT the value of the number die can't be higher than the value on the colour die.
Take note if the values on the two dice match, as this determines criticals.
Apply any modifiers to get the final result.
Results might be Blue 17, Orange 6 or Green 20, etc.
Generally, each character will have a preferred set of three colours they will always roll - determined at character creation - but there are ways to use other colours e.g. getting sharpened (see below) or expending a resource.
Let's say I'm rolling Red, Green and Blue dice for these examples:
Example 1:
I roll Red 12, Green 8 and Blue 19.
If I take Blue as my colour, I can take either of other values as my number and, since higher is better, I'll take the 12.
So I have a base result of Blue 12.
If I instead really wanted a Red result, I can take Red as my colour but that means I have to take 8 as my number giving me a base result of Red 8.
Example 2:
I roll Red 6, Green 15 and Blue 15.
If I take either Green or Blue as my colour, I can take 15 as my number.
So I have a base result of Green 15 or Blue 15 with a match.
I could also take a base result of Green 6 or Blue 6, but without a match.
This probably less desirable unless you suspect that a 15 would somehow also fail, in which case you might want to avoid the critical failure by taking a result without a match.
Example 3:
I roll Red 19, Green 14 and Blue 14.
If I take Red as my colour, then I would take 14 as my number.
That gives a base result of Red 14 however without a match.
If I take either Green or Blue as my colour, then I'd still have a number of 14.
This gives a base result of Green 14 or Blue 14 but with match.
Reading The Results: Numbers
Every attempted action has two associated numbers - the failure threshold (FT) and the success threshold (ST) with FT less than or equal to ST. The thresholds are meant to be fairly close together for most actions. To give you an idea of how it's intended to be implemented, armour would describe the distance between the FT and ST to hit a creature while their evasion determines the FT. Number determines result as follows:
Triumph: The result's number is over the ST with matching dice.
Success: The result's number is over the ST but without matching dice.
Deadlock: The result's number is at or between the thresholds without matching dice.
Failure: The result's number is under the FT but without matching dice.
Catastrophe: The result's number is under the FT with matching dice.
Shift: The result's number is at or between the threshold with matching dice.
Ye know what most of these mean I guess - Triumph is a critical success, Success is a simple success, Deadlock is a partial success/failure, Failure is a simple failure, catastrophe is a critical failure. Shift is meant to be a kind of wild card result that falls outside the standard progression and instead triggers a change in circumstances e.g. your attack drew the attention of a third party, as you sneak into the bad guy's lair you discover an unexpected opportunity.
Also - a nat 20 always counts as a success/triumph and a nat 1 always counts as a failure/catastrophe. If the action didn't have a chance of both success and failure there shouldn't have been a roll.
Reading The Results: Colours
The idea is that each colour is attached to an effect. No matter what else happens the colour's effect takes place, typically on the target of the action - so long as it makes sense. How exactly this plays out can be narrated by the player on a Triumph but is otherwise narrated by the GM. These effects are inspired by the approaches from the original mechanic but now more clearly reflect outputs rather than inputs. So, red still can still indicate a character being aggressive but now that's put in terms of being destructive. It still correlates to Rage but causation is looser here. Did you cause damage because you were aggressive or are you now aggressive/angry/frustrated because of the damage done.
Red: Damage - this can be damage dealt to hp, to a structure, to a relationship, to reputation.
Orange: Protect - this is protection from damage and can be interpreted as temp hp, a stalwart friendship or benefit of the doubt.
Yellow: Assist - this means the next action taken will be more likely to succeed or have better results than normal.
Green: Augment - this means increased potential or a buff, be that new insights, better positioning or being spurred to greater speed.
Blue: Hinder - this means the next action taken will be less likely to succeed or have worse results than normal.
Purple: Weaken - this means decreased potential or a debuff, be that uncertainty in the dirt they thought they had, fear of your character or distraction.
When a die roll is needed to determine the extent of the colour effect, each character will have six attributes which provide a die (d4, d6, d8, d10 or d12) which can be rolled for this. I've been calling these attributes Rage for Red, Devotion for Orange, Hope for Yellow, Inspiration for Green, Sorrow for Blue and Terror for Purple. The idea being that beyond being defined at character creation these can change based on what happens to a character as they develop through the story - but exactly what the mechanical trigger would be is still tbd. But it'd be somthing like: experiencing a great loss increases Sorrow, finding new faith in something increases Hope.
Adventurers in combat with a troll. You swing your sword at the troll and get a...
Red Success - you deal your sword's damage and a Rage die of damage.
Red Failure - you still deal your Rage die of damage but you don't deal the damage for your sword.
Orange Success - you deal your sword damage but the troll gains temporary hp equal to a roll of your Devotion die as you get in the way of the archer's clean shot.
Convincing an NPC ally to go out on a limb for you. You get a...
Yellow Success - they will do what you want and they will do it even more effectively than normal.
Red Success - they will do what you want but their opinion of you going forward will be less favourable e.g. because you didn't hold your tongue.
Red Triumph - they will do what you want and the Player gets to narrate that instead of damaging their relationship to the NPC they clenched their fists until they cut their palms with their fingernails, dealing a Rage die of damage to themselves while keeping their temper under control.
A dance off behind the tavern (we all have that player). You go to make some sick moves and get a...
Green Failure - you don't pull it off but notice your opponent's girl eyeing his number two.
Blue Failure - you don't pull it off and get in your head about it. Your next attempt will subtract your Sorrow from the roll.
Green Shift - you make your move but all eyes are on the tavern owner drawn out by the ruckus. On a four or higher on an Inspiration roll her disposition is advantageous.
Colour may also synergise with certain abilities. For example, the wizard's fire fire spell has an additional effect if you get a red result while the monk's crane style attack has an additional effect if you get a yellow result.
There could also be buffs and debuffs that play off of colour. For example, some effects might "bleach" one of your colourful dice making it impossible to use while another might let you move your colour one step around the colour wheel towards a specified colour, or let you flip to the opposite colour. It is not an accident that the colour effects come in pairs and that those pairs aren't associated with complementary colours - this is to keep decisions about switching colours interesting rather than simple reversals.
I also have some ideas on how the rolling of dice itself could be modified to reflect circumstance and cut down on rolling and for that vague resource I mentioned earlier.
If circumstances for an action are advantageous or it is specified by a feature, the roll may be considered sharpened. A roll can be sharpened once, twice or thrice. For each time a roll is sharpened you roll an additional colourful die. You then choose a colour and number as normal but from the larger pool.
If circumstances for an action are disadvantageous or it is specified by a feature, the roll may be considered dulled. A roll can be dulled once, twice or thrice. For each time a roll is dulled you roll an additional colourful die but you must drop the highest valued colourful dice from your roll until only the three colourful dice remain before you choose your number and colour.
If a roll is both sharpened and dulled, then instances of sharpening and dulling cancel out before the roll is made. So a roll that is sharpened three times but dulled two times is rolled as if it was sharpened once.
Sometimes a single action will determine multiple outcomes or it's tedious to have repeated rolls doing the same action. In these cases, you may use an entangled roll. For every outcome beyond the first, add a colourless die to the pool of dice rolled. Once you roll, you choose a single colour but you can choose multiple numbers - one for each outcome. The colourless dice cannot be chosen as colours but they can be chosen as numbers. If you don't have enough dice with a value at or below the value of your chosen colour, you may set any colourless dice that rolled above that value to be equal to your colour dice and choose them for your number results.
If the outcomes are distinct, you may choose which number is assigned to each but the one colour will effect all the results.
Each player has a pool of Luminosity points. These act as luck or fate points, giving the players a way to get a boost when they really want one. E.g. change their colour, choose a number that's higher than their colour die, count a difference of one as a match, increase their modifier, etc. would all come with their own price tags.
When a player's colour die is a 20, they get a point of Luminosity. They can get more Luminosity for playing into their obligations or character flaws to create complications for themselves.
I was also thinking there could be communal resource called Vibrancy that couldn't be used on your own character but could be used collectively on the group or by one player on another e.g. to let them use their modifier or preferred colours instead.
There could also be a resource for the GM, Intensity, that could be used to create interesting complications or obstacles that make the game more engaging.
The system uses one d20 each in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple - six total - called the colourful dice. Any other combination of six distinct d20s could work too. For entangled rolls (see below) you'll also need some black/white/grey d20s called the colourless dice. I'm aware that this is a pretty unreasonable number of d20s but who among us has kept their collection reasonable. :smallwink:
The Basic Roll
Roll three of the six colourful dice.
Choose one die for its colour and one for its number - BUT the value of the number die can't be higher than the value on the colour die.
Take note if the values on the two dice match, as this determines criticals.
Apply any modifiers to get the final result.
Results might be Blue 17, Orange 6 or Green 20, etc.
Generally, each character will have a preferred set of three colours they will always roll - determined at character creation - but there are ways to use other colours e.g. getting sharpened (see below) or expending a resource.
Let's say I'm rolling Red, Green and Blue dice for these examples:
Example 1:
I roll Red 12, Green 8 and Blue 19.
If I take Blue as my colour, I can take either of other values as my number and, since higher is better, I'll take the 12.
So I have a base result of Blue 12.
If I instead really wanted a Red result, I can take Red as my colour but that means I have to take 8 as my number giving me a base result of Red 8.
Example 2:
I roll Red 6, Green 15 and Blue 15.
If I take either Green or Blue as my colour, I can take 15 as my number.
So I have a base result of Green 15 or Blue 15 with a match.
I could also take a base result of Green 6 or Blue 6, but without a match.
This probably less desirable unless you suspect that a 15 would somehow also fail, in which case you might want to avoid the critical failure by taking a result without a match.
Example 3:
I roll Red 19, Green 14 and Blue 14.
If I take Red as my colour, then I would take 14 as my number.
That gives a base result of Red 14 however without a match.
If I take either Green or Blue as my colour, then I'd still have a number of 14.
This gives a base result of Green 14 or Blue 14 but with match.
Reading The Results: Numbers
Every attempted action has two associated numbers - the failure threshold (FT) and the success threshold (ST) with FT less than or equal to ST. The thresholds are meant to be fairly close together for most actions. To give you an idea of how it's intended to be implemented, armour would describe the distance between the FT and ST to hit a creature while their evasion determines the FT. Number determines result as follows:
Triumph: The result's number is over the ST with matching dice.
Success: The result's number is over the ST but without matching dice.
Deadlock: The result's number is at or between the thresholds without matching dice.
Failure: The result's number is under the FT but without matching dice.
Catastrophe: The result's number is under the FT with matching dice.
Shift: The result's number is at or between the threshold with matching dice.
Ye know what most of these mean I guess - Triumph is a critical success, Success is a simple success, Deadlock is a partial success/failure, Failure is a simple failure, catastrophe is a critical failure. Shift is meant to be a kind of wild card result that falls outside the standard progression and instead triggers a change in circumstances e.g. your attack drew the attention of a third party, as you sneak into the bad guy's lair you discover an unexpected opportunity.
Also - a nat 20 always counts as a success/triumph and a nat 1 always counts as a failure/catastrophe. If the action didn't have a chance of both success and failure there shouldn't have been a roll.
Reading The Results: Colours
The idea is that each colour is attached to an effect. No matter what else happens the colour's effect takes place, typically on the target of the action - so long as it makes sense. How exactly this plays out can be narrated by the player on a Triumph but is otherwise narrated by the GM. These effects are inspired by the approaches from the original mechanic but now more clearly reflect outputs rather than inputs. So, red still can still indicate a character being aggressive but now that's put in terms of being destructive. It still correlates to Rage but causation is looser here. Did you cause damage because you were aggressive or are you now aggressive/angry/frustrated because of the damage done.
Red: Damage - this can be damage dealt to hp, to a structure, to a relationship, to reputation.
Orange: Protect - this is protection from damage and can be interpreted as temp hp, a stalwart friendship or benefit of the doubt.
Yellow: Assist - this means the next action taken will be more likely to succeed or have better results than normal.
Green: Augment - this means increased potential or a buff, be that new insights, better positioning or being spurred to greater speed.
Blue: Hinder - this means the next action taken will be less likely to succeed or have worse results than normal.
Purple: Weaken - this means decreased potential or a debuff, be that uncertainty in the dirt they thought they had, fear of your character or distraction.
When a die roll is needed to determine the extent of the colour effect, each character will have six attributes which provide a die (d4, d6, d8, d10 or d12) which can be rolled for this. I've been calling these attributes Rage for Red, Devotion for Orange, Hope for Yellow, Inspiration for Green, Sorrow for Blue and Terror for Purple. The idea being that beyond being defined at character creation these can change based on what happens to a character as they develop through the story - but exactly what the mechanical trigger would be is still tbd. But it'd be somthing like: experiencing a great loss increases Sorrow, finding new faith in something increases Hope.
Adventurers in combat with a troll. You swing your sword at the troll and get a...
Red Success - you deal your sword's damage and a Rage die of damage.
Red Failure - you still deal your Rage die of damage but you don't deal the damage for your sword.
Orange Success - you deal your sword damage but the troll gains temporary hp equal to a roll of your Devotion die as you get in the way of the archer's clean shot.
Convincing an NPC ally to go out on a limb for you. You get a...
Yellow Success - they will do what you want and they will do it even more effectively than normal.
Red Success - they will do what you want but their opinion of you going forward will be less favourable e.g. because you didn't hold your tongue.
Red Triumph - they will do what you want and the Player gets to narrate that instead of damaging their relationship to the NPC they clenched their fists until they cut their palms with their fingernails, dealing a Rage die of damage to themselves while keeping their temper under control.
A dance off behind the tavern (we all have that player). You go to make some sick moves and get a...
Green Failure - you don't pull it off but notice your opponent's girl eyeing his number two.
Blue Failure - you don't pull it off and get in your head about it. Your next attempt will subtract your Sorrow from the roll.
Green Shift - you make your move but all eyes are on the tavern owner drawn out by the ruckus. On a four or higher on an Inspiration roll her disposition is advantageous.
Colour may also synergise with certain abilities. For example, the wizard's fire fire spell has an additional effect if you get a red result while the monk's crane style attack has an additional effect if you get a yellow result.
There could also be buffs and debuffs that play off of colour. For example, some effects might "bleach" one of your colourful dice making it impossible to use while another might let you move your colour one step around the colour wheel towards a specified colour, or let you flip to the opposite colour. It is not an accident that the colour effects come in pairs and that those pairs aren't associated with complementary colours - this is to keep decisions about switching colours interesting rather than simple reversals.
I also have some ideas on how the rolling of dice itself could be modified to reflect circumstance and cut down on rolling and for that vague resource I mentioned earlier.
If circumstances for an action are advantageous or it is specified by a feature, the roll may be considered sharpened. A roll can be sharpened once, twice or thrice. For each time a roll is sharpened you roll an additional colourful die. You then choose a colour and number as normal but from the larger pool.
If circumstances for an action are disadvantageous or it is specified by a feature, the roll may be considered dulled. A roll can be dulled once, twice or thrice. For each time a roll is dulled you roll an additional colourful die but you must drop the highest valued colourful dice from your roll until only the three colourful dice remain before you choose your number and colour.
If a roll is both sharpened and dulled, then instances of sharpening and dulling cancel out before the roll is made. So a roll that is sharpened three times but dulled two times is rolled as if it was sharpened once.
Sometimes a single action will determine multiple outcomes or it's tedious to have repeated rolls doing the same action. In these cases, you may use an entangled roll. For every outcome beyond the first, add a colourless die to the pool of dice rolled. Once you roll, you choose a single colour but you can choose multiple numbers - one for each outcome. The colourless dice cannot be chosen as colours but they can be chosen as numbers. If you don't have enough dice with a value at or below the value of your chosen colour, you may set any colourless dice that rolled above that value to be equal to your colour dice and choose them for your number results.
If the outcomes are distinct, you may choose which number is assigned to each but the one colour will effect all the results.
Each player has a pool of Luminosity points. These act as luck or fate points, giving the players a way to get a boost when they really want one. E.g. change their colour, choose a number that's higher than their colour die, count a difference of one as a match, increase their modifier, etc. would all come with their own price tags.
When a player's colour die is a 20, they get a point of Luminosity. They can get more Luminosity for playing into their obligations or character flaws to create complications for themselves.
I was also thinking there could be communal resource called Vibrancy that couldn't be used on your own character but could be used collectively on the group or by one player on another e.g. to let them use their modifier or preferred colours instead.
There could also be a resource for the GM, Intensity, that could be used to create interesting complications or obstacles that make the game more engaging.