Dice and Skills! (Patreon)

Hello! New playtest with new dice and a brand-new skill system! So we get a new Designing The Game post! It’s been a few weeks since the last MCDM RPG update, but only because everyone’s hard at work on Flee, Mortals! and ARCADIA, so let’s get stuck in.

When last we left our heroes…

The Dice

If you read the last development update, you may remember we were considering a new way of handling dice. This new model imagines that your stats (Might, Reason, etc…) have a numerical value like +1, or +3 that you add to your roll when doing things associated with that stat. Which is…how literally dozens of other RPGs do it. That’s pretty typical of game development. You have a Known Good Solution but you figure, “let’s see if there’s a more fun or interesting way to do this.” The “stats are dice” system where Might: 2 means you roll two dice seemed straightforward and fun, but it created a system where being good at something meant you’d almost certainly succeed (lots of dice!) while being not-good at something (not even bad just not-good) meant you’d almost certainly fail. At which point, why bother with die rolls?

So this week we tried a new dice system. Gone were Attribute Dice and the Impact Die (sort of) and instead we used a new die; the ACTION die! It’s the die you roll, when you’re…taking an action. 😀

The action die (d12) has successes and surges on it. The proficiency die (now a d8) stuck around, it has successes, surges, and The Crit on it, and then you add your stat mod to the total result from those two dice.

Then if you need situational bonuses or penalties, you roll one of two other dice, the Bane and Boon dice (d6). The Boon die only has successes and the Bane die has SKULLS where each skull cancels out a success. These dice are less impactful than the Action die and Proficiency die, in that they have fewer successes/failures on them and no surges. So it’s sorta like the Impact Die is still here, just much smaller impact and there’s an Evil Impact die now! What names these dice will take, we don’t know. Bane and Boon seem kinda jargony and not in a cool way. 😀 But who knows? Maybe we’ll talk about Temp Love in a later update!

This was the system we used in Friday’s test and it worked fine. There were no obvious problems. It wasn’t revolutionary, but it did its job which is to A: work and B: get out of the way so we can play.

I think we saw one player suffer a Bane and we got several Boons and they worked great. The current rule is: banes and boon dice cancel each other out. So if you have a boon die from one condition and a bane from another, you don’t roll either. If you got 2 Boons and 1 Bane, you roll 1 Boon die.

This seems pretty straightforward. We can all imagine edge cases where it gets tedious, but that’s the nature of edge cases. “Well, I can imagine a scenario where this would be a nightmare.” Yeah well, so can we. We just don’t know enough about the rest of the game yet to worry about it.

So, it seems like the new dice are working! But the old dice seemed to work too, until they didn’t. But my gut tells me that while these dice might change, or mutate into something else, each change will be smaller than the previous. We’ll see!

Skills!

Hey we have skills now! Well some skills. Certainly enough skills to test!

We (the design team: Hannah, James and I) had a long and very productive meeting about what skills were for and we agreed that, not to put too fine a point on it, skills were the primary way your character interacts with the world, outside of combat.

I said, it’s like this is a skill-based game, except there’s this one skill we know is going to dominate proceedings, the Fighting skill, so it gets an entire system for attacking and damage and parrying and spells and all that. But outside of combat, it’s skills. We’ve all played other RPGs that weren’t about Fighting Monsters where “fighting” is literally just another skill, because you don’t do any more fighting in those games than you do sneaking or investigating.

Then we spent a LOT of time talking about how players can or should be able to define how skills are related to their stats, and how, if at all, skills should overlap. This was a very noodly discussion (my favorite kind) and it seemed (??) like we agreed that, sometimes, it’s NICE when skills overlap, because that gives the Director the leeway to let more players participate in the story.

The canonical example is Acrobatics and Athletics in 5e. One is dex-based, the other strength-based. And there are obviously instances where only one of those skills applies to a given situation.

But it seems like there are just as many instances where either skill COULD be a reasonable choice for some action, so why not let the players use whichever one they’re better at? The flip side of this is that there are other skills where it’s sort of never clear what the difference between two skills is and people just take it for granted that scratching their head over it is normal.

Also, and I admit this is personal, I’ve never been a fan of “passive perception.” It makes sense in a video game where, if you build your character to have a high passive perception, you just have a better chance of noticing stuff as you move through the world, but video games don’t have game masters.

It just puts what I consider to be an annoying burden on the GM and makes the game seem more like this thing the GM is doing while the players watch. The GM determines the difficulty, checks to see what the players’ passive Perception stats are, and announces the result. No die rolling, no interaction, no ambiguity, no drama. This is not why I play RPGs.

This led to a discussion of the “give me a Notice check” phenomenon by which the Director calls for a check, to see who, if anyone, notices something, and as a result everyone at the table knows “there’s something to notice here.” But I’m not convinced that’s a bug. One of the things players need to learn, and early, is that there is a difference between what they know and what their characters know. Just a basic fact of the game. But also, if it’s important to the Director, they can just make the roll themselves. I did a whole video on the GM making Stealth checks for the players, since their character can’t tell “am I hidden or not?” unless or until someone notices them. But like most things in this department, I think that stuff should be up to the Director.

This made us wonder if there aren’t some PC skills that are primarily called for by the GM. Where the player rarely (not never) asks if they can make a check, but the GM often prompts the player to make that check. That seems to be a thing, but we don’t know enough about how many skills our game has, and what those skills are, to worry about it yet.

We also talked about how we have surges, and it would be cool if different skills had cool special effects that fired off surges. And I very strongly wanted to see skill stunts. Special actions you can take with skills if that’s how you choose to customize your character.

And then it seemed like, should we have special crit results for each skill? Makes sense. Isn’t something I’ve seen done before (mind you, I haven’t played every game). But getting a crit on an attack roll is a thing, why isn’t getting a crit on a skill?

Well maybe a lot of reasons, like maybe because crits and skills are from different decades (or centuries depending on how you look at it) and so were never intended to talk to each other in the first place! Or maybe, perhaps more reasonably, it’s just a pain in the ass to figure out what a critical success means in a game with a lot of skills.

I mean, think about whatever game you’re playing now. How many skills does it have? Probably a lot. How much of a pain in the ass would it be to go down that entire list and define what a crit gets you for each skill? Answer: it would be a huge pain in the ass. Made worse by the fact that most skills cover a wide array of uses. You gonna come up with a different crit result for each possible use?!

Well…we did! 😀

It just seemed like…yeah it might be a lot of work, but it might also be fun to do and it might result in just a way more interesting game or play experience. The Crit still only lives on the Proficiency die, so PCs can’t crit with a skill they’re not trained in, but let’s try it and see what happens!

Now, none of us will be surprised if it turns out this is too much, or that it works for some skills but needing to come up with different crit results for every skill doesn’t work, or even just that needing to come up with Crit Results, Surge Results, and Stunts for each skill means we’re biting a lot of cool abilities from classes (or ancestries or whatever) that need cool things to do outside of combat, but you never know until you try.

And IF it turns out that, yes, this was a dead end for some reason, so what? We’ll have come up with a ton of cool skill-related abilities we can hand out to the classes and careers and ancestries. We need cool abilities anyway, might as well start here!

I suggested, rather than try and puzzle out the entire list of possible skills for our game before we even really know how skills work, let’s pick a handful of skills that we know are going to be really commonly used in the game, and prototype them.

So…James did that! He busted his ass (WHILE working on Flee, Mortals!) and produced QUITE a robust document (almost 8,000 words) on how skills worked, how skill tests work, and a list of 7 skills with all the associated cool things you can do with them.

Wanna see!?

The First Skill!

Here’s the actual prototype text for the Athletics skill. Yes, this game currently has both Athletics and Acrobatics. They might not survive iteration, but we talked a lot about it and the bottom line was; they seem like things characters in a Heroic Fantasy Game would be doing a lot and combining them into one skill really changed our idea of what skills were about in ways we didn’t like.

What follows is James’ original text. Before you get stuck in, be aware that your character currently only gets one skill stunt, total, at first level. So you’re not using this entire list, you just pick one stunt from across all skill stunts, and then probably a new one at each new level.

Background: Making an Attribute Roll

Whenever you make an attribute roll, you roll the action die and add the appropriate attribute score (determined by the GM) to the total number of successes. The GM chooses a target number (or TN) and interprets the roll’s degree of success.

Athletics

Typical Attribute: Might

The Athletics skill is used for climbing, grappling, jumping, and swimming.

Climbing

In combat, as a maneuver, you can make a Might-Athletics roll to climb a surface. If your roll is equal to or greater than the TN, you can climb a number of squares equal to the number of successes rolled up to half your speed.

You can attempt to climb creatures who are 2 or more sizes larger than you. If the creature is willing, you climb them as you would a surface. If the creature is unwilling, they make an Might-Athletics or Agility-Acrobatics roll (their choice) opposed by your Might-Athletics roll. On a success, you climb a number of squares equal to the difference in successes up to half your speed. While you climb or ride an unwilling creature, you gain a boon to melee weapon attacks against the creature and the creature can use a maneuver to make a Might-Athletics roll or Agility-Acrobatics roll (their choice) opposed by your Might-Athletics roll. On a failure, you fall from the creature into an unoccupied adjacent space of their choice.

Outside of combat, you typically only need to make one successful Might-Athletics roll to climb a surface, though the GM may call for more for particularly tall or hazardous surfaces.

Jumping

As a maneuver, you can make a long jump and jump a number of squares equal to your Might score without a roll. If you wish to jump further, make a Might-Athletics roll as part of this maneuver. You can jump one additional square per success. The total distance you jump can’t exceed your speed.

As a maneuver, you can make a high jump and jump up 1 square. If you want to jump up 2 squares, you must succeed on a TN 10 Might-Athletics roll as part of the maneuver.

Swimming

In combat, as a maneuver, you can make a Might-Athletics roll to swim in liquid that is deeper than you are tall. If your roll is equal to or greater than the TN, you can swim a number of squares equal to the number of successes rolled up to half your speed.

Outside of combat, you typically only need to make one successful Might-Athletics roll to swim to a nearby destination, though the GM may call for more for a particularly long or hazardous journey.

Grapple

As long as you have at least one hand free, you can use an action to attempt to grab a creature of your size or smaller who is adjacent to you. You make an opposed Might-Athletics roll against the target’s Might-Athletics or Agility-Acrobatics roll (their choice). On a success, the target’s speed is 0 and they have a bane on all attack rolls that don’t include you as a target. While grappling a target, you can only move at half speed and when you move, you can bring the target with you. You can end the grapple at any time.

If you are grappled by another creature, you can use a maneuver to attempt to break the grapple. The creature makes a Might-Athletics roll opposed by your Might-Athletics or Agility-Acrobatics roll (your choice). On a success, you break the grapple. You can only attempt to break a grapple once per turn.

Athletics Surges

You can spend surges in the following way when you succeed on an Athletics roll:

• If your roll was made to climb, jump, or swim, you can move an extra square beyond your speed for each surge spent.
• If your roll was made to grapple another creature, you can shift a square and pull the target with you for each surge spent.
• If your roll was made to break another creature’s grapple on you, you can knockback them 1 square for each surge spent.
• You can pick one ally within 10 squares who is untrained in Athletics engaged in the same activity as you. That ally gets +1 success per surge spent to their Athletics roll if it is made before the end of this round.

Athletics Critical Effects

You can spend a critical effect in the following way when you succeed on an Athletics roll:

• If your roll was made to climb, jump, or swim, you can spend a critical effect move up to twice the distance you normally would.
• If your roll was made to grapple another creature, you spend a critical effect to knock them prone. If you do, they can’t stand while you maintain the grapple unless you allow them to.
• If your roll was made to break another creature’s grapple on you, you spend a critical effect to knock them prone.

Athletics Stunts

You can gain the following Athletics stunts:

• Body Armor: When you make a successful Athletics roll to grapple another creature or maintain a grapple, you can spend a critical effect to use that creature as a shield against incoming attacks. Whenever you take physical damage before the start of your next turn, the creature you grapple takes half the damage and you take half the damage.
• Gorilla Grip: You can grapple and push creatures who are 1 size larger than you and you gain 1 boon on Athletics rolls to initiate and maintain grapples.
• Natural Athlete: You gain 1 boon on Athletics rolls made to climb, jump, and swim.
• Self-Propelled: You can climb and swim up to your speed (instead of half your speed).
• Take That! And This!: When you make a melee weapon attack that deals damage to a creature you can grapple, you can spend 3 surges to grapple the creature.
• Wrestler: You gain 1 boon on attacks against creatures you have grappled.
• You’re Coming with Me: You can move your full speed while you have another creature grappled.

And It Worked!

Of course, folks are going to have a LOT of ideas about whether this is the right direction to go with skills. Well, we have all those same questions. But you gotta start somewhere and SO FAR this worked pretty well. We are still worried that this is too much, too many options per skill, too many things that should be class or ancestry or career-path rewards get baked into skills, but we actually used the 7 new skills in our last playtest and the above system seemed to work? We had fun!

Some of the problems we anticipate (did we just take all our cool ideas and bake them into skills leaving nothing left for classes and backgrounds?) we won’t be able to evaluate until other parts of the game are further along, but none of the skill powers posed a problem during the first test.

Friday’s Test

Armed with some new skills, James ran another adventure for us. I’m not going to go into all the details, but we used the skills a few times and there were no problems and many neat moments.

Like one player got a Crit on a Notice check and what would have been “you can see marks like something clawed its way up this cliff,” turned into that PLUS “you see a figure poke its head over the edge of the cliff, high above. It looks bald and there are patches on its skin. It sees you noticing it, and disappears.”

And we not only knew “hey they went up this cliff,” but we also knew what was WAITING for us on top of the cliff. Zombies and skelingtons!

We faded back into the forest and picked another spot further away from which to scale the cliff in the hopes of surprising our enemy. That worked and now we were on TOP of the cliff with the opportunity to stealth around the undead and go straight to the Witch’s Cottage.

I got something like FIVE surges on my stealth check, in addition to successes, and that gave me the opportunity to do a couple of things. I could spend the surges to get a bonus on my next attack (i.e. I snuck up on them) or I could give those surges to a nearby teammate who didn’t roll well.

I thought “Oh cool, I’ll give them to the Beastheart who rolled bad.” But then I realized I had 5 surges and they were only 3 successes behind the Tactician. No point giving the Beastheart +5 stealth if that just meant the undead would notice us anyway from the Tactician’s roll. +3 would be enough!

Then I read the text again and realized…I could do BOTH. So I used 3 surges to give the Beastheart three stealth successes bringing them into parity with the Tactician, and I used the other two to get +2 damage on my next attack.

Neat!

We got pretty far through the adventure using just Notice, Stealth and Athletics, but there’s still more adventure left, so we’ll probably come back to it later.

Post-mortem

The one thing we all noticed was the current dice produce too many surges. I got at least one surge in my last 14 rolls. We don’t think surges should be that common. More common than The Crit, absolutely! But not “almost as common as a success.”

It’s a little more complicated than that—if you tally up my totals over those last 14 rolls I got 29 surges (which seems like a LOT!) but then in those same rolls I got 79 successes. So it’s not about the total number of surges, it’s about how often a given result has A surge on it.

In other words, it’s ok if some facings have like “4 surges!” as a result. But there need to be many fewer facings with surges on them. Getting a surge shouldn’t be common, but how many surges you get when you DO get a surge can just be about what’s fun.

Also, we probably want abilities and items to be able to produce surges on their own, characters to be able to give other characters surges, and that also means we need fewer surges.

So whatever you think about the skill system currently, we are also thinking those things, but A: it worked and B: we had bigger fish to fry. Therefore we’re going to at least do one more playtest with the current skills (and probably a few, we really need to drive it around for a while before we decide what’s working and what’s not) but we want to pull the odds of getting a surge down for the next test and see how it goes.

That’s it folks! New dice, a new skill system and really just a LOT of surges. Hopefully there was something interesting in here to talk about until the next update!