Grimm - Fantasy Flight - predestination?

[jedijon]

Grimm RPG by Fantasy Flight has a dice mechanic that is designed [explicitly stated in the rulebook] to generate normal results most of the time. They want to avoid a character being able to lift a freight train one turn but fail to move a chair the following turn...


Here's how it works, if you make a check using your lvl3 skill; your result...

• will remain lvl3 if you roll a 2 through 5
• will be lvl2 if you roll a 1
• will be lvl4 if you roll a 6*
• *and you can keep rolling to increase your level IF YOU KEEP getting a 6 otherwise you stop there

Pretend you have a group of adventurers who come across an enchanted plate of cookies which, if they eat them, will result in them becoming bloated and floating up to the ceiling. The difficult of this willpower [called "pluck" in Grimm] check is lvl3. The pluck lvl of these characters is 1, 3, 3, 4. So 2 characters have an 83% shot at being okay, one character has a 100% shot at being okay [you can only lose ONE level] and the final character with the lowly score of lvl1...has a 3% chance to pass this test.

Now, there's still SOME uncertainty to your rolls in this system. But basically - if you're 1 or more levels over the required level you can't fail, and if you're more than 1 level below the required level you are going to fail. I like the simplicity of the system. You know what happened when you see what you rolled. At least if the GM is announcing the difficulty level prior to the check. You COULD get the same psychological effect in a d20 game by announcing the difficulty level prior to the roll, in which case the only difference is the math goes well beyond 6...

Has anybody actually played Grimm? I've just read the rulebook. Initially I was impressed with the "linear d6" mechanic, but now it looks like absolute predestination. If I write an adventure using this system I need to have my character's sheets in front of me and figure out what they can, will, should fail and which challenges they're going to HAVE to work together to have any chance at succeeding and/or which specific character is going to be responsible for each action. It feels like "okay Player A is going to break open this door because only he can do it, Player B will talk down the pixie on the other side from jumping out the window because only they have a high enough social stat, and Player C has the sword so they're the only person who can beat the lvl DC for cutting through the bars of the owl's cage - I guess I'll set a low DC for the next challenge so that anybody can autopass it and feel good about showing up..."

FYI - this is all geared toward finding a system mechanic that's easy enough I won't have to keep explaining it to my kids [aged 4, 7] during the game and which can handle both checks and opposed rolls as well as a minimal amount of combat. I think I'll be writing my own d6 die pool mechanic until they can d20 on their own [requiring both ability & inclination].

 

[Crothian]

It sounds like it may not be for you. I played it years ago when it first came out. It is a little weird and characters basically can just do what they can do with little chance of exceeding that. We found that characters would only then do what they were good at and never tried something they were not good at. It is a fun setting and we had more fun with that then the mechanics.

 

[GMMichael]

Crothian makes a good point: attempting hard stuff isn't much fun if your best chance to pull it off is 1 in 6.

If you want to generate normal results most of the time, just let your player skip the die roll in exchange for a completely normal result. Of course, some situations call for better-than-normal results...

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=49099]jedijon[/MENTION]: I was initially very interested in the Grimm game, as I am a great fan of faerie tales - both old folk lore and new literary stories written in the mode of a fairy tale ('The White Cat', 'The Light Princess', 'The Selfish Giant', 'Through the Fire', 'The Hobbit', 'Star Wars', etc.).

Unfortunately, the game itself didn't live up to my expectations. I was unhappy with the move from the D20 mechanic to the flat d6 mechanic. There is hardly a point in having a fortune mechanic with no fortune in it. Yes, there are times when if what you are going for is realism that you want only minimal variation in the fortune - how much you can lift, how far you can jump, how fast you can run, etc. But the vast majority of contests aren't like that and are decidedly boring if you know basically how they will come out. And yes you are right, more so that most systems, Grimm would lend itself to conscious or unconscious railroading. And yes, more so than most systems, Grimm would encourage players to only test themselves with things that they knew they could do.

But my even bigger disappointment with Grimm is that the creator of it hates fairy tales and made little provisions really for the game to be run a person who loves them. The assumption seems to be that the way to play the game is in the mode of an anti-fairy tale, as if subverting the fairy tale was somehow more interesting than the fairy tale itself. With neither the system nor the setting ultimately being to my liking, it occurred to me I'd do better by myself.

If your goal is creating a system for 4 to 7 year olds, may I suggest my system SIPS (Simple Imaginative Play System)? It's not in a published or publishable state, but I can probably come up with a enough notes for your needs and I think it will work better for what my kids call 'The Fairy Game' than a d6 dice pool system.

 

[Celebrim]

[MENTION=49099]jedijon[/MENTION]: Just based on my experiences with RPing with very young children, what you want in a system is:

1) Success happens most of the time: Little kids have a very hard time handling failure in a game. In particular, there needs really to be no way to lose.
2) Still, failure can almost always happen: Little kids are used to life having lots of bumps and bruises and used to their feelings being bigger than they are. They are used to failing and for every task to be challenging. It won't strike them as odd that there is a chance of spilling the milk when pouring a glass. You want failure described in a way that they can relate to, act on, and which is non-threatening to them. Even then, you'll probably have to coach them on handling failures.
3) The focus should be on problem solving, not conflict: I don't know how universal this is, but my kids found conflict to be completely threatening and generally responded to it by very logically evading it. They tended to respond to conflict by not doing things that could get them in trouble (much less danger), by running away, and by seeking a grown up. It was very hard to get them interested in a story of conflict, and in particular stories of large and broad 'epic' conflict tended to create 'not my problem' fields around them. If it was clearly a big problem, it was clearly (to them) something adults ought to handle. It didn't even matter that the kid characters they were playing had superpowers, because they did. To them, it still didn't make sense for a kid to intervene in epic problems. I found I had a hard time arguing against that logic, and in particular I strongly sensed that problems that the grown up couldn't solve would terrify a 4 or 5 year old and it would not logically make sense to them that they could solve problems a grown up couldn't (despite this being a common trope of the fiction that they read). On the other hand, a story about resolving the challenges of being a kid, and handling a kid's problems very much interested them.

 

[Crothian]

Games for kids

Meddling Kids. you can find the PDF for sale at Drivethrough RPG. It is the Scooby Doo RPG without the license. It is a fun and simple games that even has the character class for the talking animal mascot.

Faery's Tale Deluxe is another one you can find at DrivethroughRPG. It has the kids play Faery creatures in a magical land.

 

[Celebrim]

Pretend you have a group of adventurers who come across an enchanted plate of cookies which, if they eat them, will result in them becoming bloated and floating up to the ceiling. The difficult of this willpower [called "pluck" in Grimm] check is lvl3. The pluck lvl of these characters is 1, 3, 3, 4. So 2 characters have an 83% shot at being okay, one character has a 100% shot at being okay [you can only lose ONE level] and the final character with the lowly score of lvl1...has a 3% chance to pass this test.

In SIPS, this would be handled a bit differently, but even where Grimm suggests you take your kids might not even be necessary.

In my experience, it doesn't even make sense to have the cookies be enchanted. Cookies to a 4 year old are already enchanted magical artifacts with potential curses to them. You don't have to call them out as supernatural and draw on the mythic power of cookies. It's already there. Simply eating too many cookies is something that they can understand. And your players are likely to be good RPers - much better than adults. The question of not eating the cookies won't even come up (unless they've been instructed not to). The characters will eat the cookies because they themselves would eat the cookies, because "Cookies!". If they are told however that the cookies are poisonous or had been on the floor, it wouldn't make sense to them that they'd want to eat the cookies - "Yuck!" The idea that the kid would want to eat bad cookies could be difficult to convey, and the idea of cookies that make you want to eat them even though they are bad could fall in the "Seriously Scary, I need a Timeout IRL" category.

So for me, playing this scene with four year olds, the question is, "Can I be good and take just 1 cookie, or will I eat the whole plate of cookies?"

This is a challenge of life that is fully engaging to a 4 year old.

In SIPS, not eating a whole plate of cookies is a fairly difficult challenge that even many grown ups would have difficulty with. As such, it has a DC of probably about 4 or 6 depending on how yummy the cookies look. Facing the cookies is a test of Heart, so the players would take their heart dice (anything from a d4 to a d12 depending on how they arrange their stats), and add any one skill they have that they think is relevant to call out - like 'obedient' or 'willpower' or 'sensible'. Skills are open ended and usually initially descriptors of their character by the players, guided by the GM, and sometimes added to the character by the DM in play. The player can also describe how their super power is relevant to the task and if successful, they can add their superpower dice.

Early on, I found that most challenges need be only DC 2. Eventually as the kid 'grows up' and the player has a better handle on leveraging their skills and superpower, they can handle more and more serious challenges. The big thing is that challenges should usually be overcome. If the player feels that they can't do what they intend to do regularly, they'll start considering this game inferior to their own empowered imaginative play where they can do ANYTHING. Delayed gratification isn't easy for a kid. Making failure be engaging is important.

If they are successful in resisting the challenge, they can put a check mark by the skill they called out (or possibly gain a new skill). When checkmarks exceed the ranks of the skill, they can roll to add to the skill. If the roll beats their current ranks, their ranks go up by 1.

If they aren't successful in resisting the challenge, they suffer a consequence set by the GM. In this case, the consequence might be 'Sugar Rush' or 'Feels Sick'. For each consequence a kid is currently suffering, the DC of checks is usually increased by 2, but in the case of 'Feels Sick' it might actually make resisting cookies easier. That's left up to the GM, as this is meant to be highly freeform and adaptable. Consequences usually go away on their own after a suitable interval, but they can be alleviated either by another kid thinking of a suitable plan and making a suitable check or by enlisting the aid of Mom (under the "Mom makes it all better") rule, provided Mom (or equivalent adult super-powered entity) is available. In this case suitable plan for "Sugar Rush" might be, "Let's run around outside and get our crazies out!" or a suitable plan for "Feels Sick" might be, "Let's go take a nap." In either case, getting rid of a consequence requires mutual help, playing with a friend to get the crazies out (probably a test of Feet) or mothering/comforting the friend so they can sleep (probably a test of Smile).

This is all geared with getting the kid to "use their words" and play out the problem.

In short, the sort of thing my kids enjoyed as kids was nothing like what I would structure for older players. Fun can have completely different definitions, in no small part by just how much better the kids are at RPing than adults. For example, when their character is injured, they fully imagine it. Running around regularly getting yourself injured the way you do in D&D strikes them quite reasonably as insane.

 

[jedijon]

I'd like to hear more about SIPS Celebrim.

It seems like we've sorta wrapped up talking about how frustrating it is to know exactly what you can accomplish and although your abilities are capped effectively at +1lvl...the 'Dumb & Dumber' in you is still "saying there's a chance"...because of course you COULD roll infinite 6s.

It's a mechanic that's really just talking out of both sides of its mouth. I thought a lot about D&D5E and their mechanical desire to "make low level threats relevant to high level players" and what that means. I think that and Grimm's linear [read flat] d6 are struggling with the same thing. This isn't the place to go on about my thoughts on what story relevant those 5E mechanics have. To return to Grimm for just a moment longer, it's the shape of the bell curve. If 5E wanted to both narrow and flatten the curve, that's great. Grimm has an ultra narrow curve, it's not really a bell curve at all.

This game is granular +/-1. You could have the same fun with a fudge dice. The designers tell you they don't like the story implications of results that are incredibly high and incredibly low from the same source [your character's the bomb one turn and whiffs the next] but they LEFT IN the ability for your character to really really rock...just so infrequently as to never matter to your own story. Why? What they wanted to do was give you a -1 [20%], a +0 [40%], a +1 [20%], a +2 [10%], & a +3 [10%] or something like that. A more complicated roll substitution with a d10 would've done it. Albeit with an ugly chart. Instead we've got -1 [17%], +0 [66%], +1 [14%], +2 [3%], +3 [0.5%], +4 [0.00whatever%], +5 [0.o0you'reamasochist%]....Yikes!

There's a couple recent threads about gaming with kids that are really cool and have some legs:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?413601-Gaming-for-Kids
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?364748-5e-with-Young-Kids

For those who are more into "how should we game with kids" than "can Grimm's mechanic work/excite" maybe I'll see you around in one of those. I might even start my own "Gaming with Kids: Mechanics".

Tomorrow is game day. I'm adapting a dragon module [3E] for use in a homebrew system that is a d6 dice pool. It doesn't require math or reading.

There 5 stats that are indicated by an ICON, Might, Speed, Smarts, Heart, and Luck. Players get two pools of 3d6 and two of 4d6. They assign those to a stat other than luck. Their luck stat is 2.

If you want to bust a door, make a Might check--the GM will tell the difficulty [# of successes required] and if need be modify the target [default is a 4+].

Modifying the pool size is MAJOR, visible to players by default [since they can see their sheet] and should only accompany outstanding preparation for an event [think 1 fight] or lack thereof [setting an ambush vs. rushing in way outnumbered] and is almost always temporary. Changing the difficulty is MEDIUM and based on what the player says they want to do, something easy or 10 hard things simultaneously...and may or may not be visible to players. Changing the target is MINOR and based on the situation the character is in, sick/poisoned, blessed, etc. and also visible to players.

At the start of each gaming session the character gets a # of luck dice equal to their stat. This is a "roll under" value, so pick when you want to spend one and then less than or equal to their luck stat gains you +1 success on this roll. You can spend after seeing the results. Once spent they don't come back [unless you're awesome!] till next session. Will probably do critical fumble = all 1s, and critical success = 3 of a kind that are themselves successes. Suffice it to say that the math is just a touch more granular than I'd like [a 1 step shift in either pool/difficulty/target has a big effect], but that could be fixed by going d10 if it becomes worth the benefit [longer to check dice, they skitter farther on the table]. But - at least everything points in the right direction. My kids won't be running the stats on this...but I like to know that more accomplished characters [bigger pool] are less affected by negative modifiers and have lower variability in their results - plus the proposed critical miss/hit mechanics both provide proportional results to better characters. Luck mechanic is wonky and opposite of the other "roll high" parts but it and the "find a triple" are the best I got.

And that's it! Whew! Simple? We'll see! Wish me luck.

 

[Celebrim]

It seems like we've sorta wrapped up talking about how frustrating it is to know exactly what you can accomplish and although your abilities are capped effectively at +1lvl

I don't know about that. I just fully agree with you that it is a dumb mechanic and constraints results to much. There are only a few mechanics where it makes since to have such a flat curve, mostly those having to do with measurable accomplishment rather than with pass/fail. A mechanic which is good for, "How much you can lift?" or "How far can you jump?" isn't necessarily good for, "Can you solve the math problem?" or "Can you hit what you are aiming at with a rock?" or "Can you resist eating the cookies?" And in particular, because it defined all the challenges in terms of a measurable accomplishment (makes sense for jumping), everything becomes like that burden you can't lift.

It's worth noting that in 1e AD&D, "How much can you lift?" or "How far can you jump?" weren't even treated as questions that required a fortune mechanic. I consider that superior mechanically to what Grimm tried to do.

You are correct to mention FUDGE dice. If the mechanic had been 1-2: -1, 3-4: +0, 5-6: +1, then it actually would have produced a more interesting curve. It might not have been a great mechanic still, and you might have to introduce additional complexities to get bell curves that were good for various situations ("edge", "advantage", "disadvantage", etc.), but it would have been better than what they offered because the math would have been more interesting. You would have at least felt you had a chance of getting lucky and doing something heroic. You would have at least felt risk.

But again, all of this is as much to say, "I think you are absolutely right." And as such, I don't feel there is much to talk about. Full agreement is a terrible position to have if you want to have an interesting discussion. At best, you can just vent your frustration to a sympathetic ear.

Tomorrow is game day. I'm adapting a dragon module [3E] for use in a homebrew system that is a d6 dice pool. It doesn't require math or reading.

I will say that I thought seriously about creating a D6 dice pool system for my own homebrew because they have the advantage of only requiring counting and not addition. You can just use dice with pips on them and have the kid count the pips. I decided against it because by the time my girls really had the attention span to play a game for an hour at a stretch, they could also do basic reading and addition and I could always help them with the math.

A game without reading of some sort is harder. You could play SIPS without reading - and the character sheet is designed to provide for this - if you dropped skills from the game. If you did that, you'd probably want to make the superpower a flat +1 or +2, and leave all the DC's at 2 (easy) or 4 (hard) and make conditions a -1.

Your system sounds like it would work and has some similarities with SIPS conceptually, but it's as complicated as 'Advanced SIPS' (used for the 'Hogwarts Game') and I feel a 4 year old is going to be completely lost in it. With a 4 year old and a 7 year old, even SIPS might be too complicated and the stripped down theoretical SIPS with no skills, flat +2 superpower, and no DC's above 4 might be more to their speed. But your kids might have more patience and affinity for math and conflict than mine did at those ages, so it might work.

As for SIPS, let me look around and see if I can find some notes on the basic game. Mostly what I run is really freeform though. It pretty much has to be for kids.

 

[jedijon]

The quote "sorta wrapped up talking" is now officially double dumb

I meant it seemed like we'd moved on from Grimm mechanics to kid-game mechanics and not that we agreed 100% on our opinions regarding Grimm's mechanics. And you're doubly right - the next two posts [including MY OWN] had something to say about Grimm's mechanics...and those things were not 100% identical

Crazy stuff!

I walked far enough down the road with Grimm that I know I'm not going to play the ruleset. However, I'm now intrigued by whether it could be saved/vastly-improved/whathaveyou by...what exactly? Perhaps a simple change to the level resolution mechanic would do it? Again, I'm still not going to run the main mechanic for my kids. But would some changes rescue the fun of taking an action yet still keep the FEEL of the "you can be heroic...but mostly you're going to perform how you'd expect" core intact?

Now [result on 1d6]
1 [-1lvl], 2-5 [+0lvl], 6 [+1lvl, explodes on further sixes - stops on anything else]

Proposed [result on 1d6]
1-2 [roll 1d4 "fudge" die*], 3-5 [+0lvl], 6 [roll 3d6 "fudge" dice**]

Terms
*1d4 fudge die; 1-2 [-1lvl], 3-4 [+0lvl]
**3d6 fudge dice; 1-2 [-1lvl], 3-4 [+0lvl], 5-6 [+1lvl]

This still gives you a 1/6 shot at the lower end of your ORIGINAL die roll of performing poorly and caps "poorly" at -1 level. There is, however, greater possibility of success - a little more overall variability - with a touch of danger - when rolling a 6. You could lose or gain 3 levels. The bell curve is pretty tight, so you're mostly +/-1lvl. This reinforced the "you mostly do what you can do" but allows you enough of a possibility to succeed that you'd take that chance. Since losing several levels doesn't entail critical failure and only really matters on an opposed roll, it works OK.

You could do the same thing but simpler [albeit slightly more at odds with the original ruleset and possibly the intentions of it as well...] by either A) 1-4 [+0lvl], 5-6 [2d6 fudge dice from -1 to +1] or B) 1-2 [1d4 fudge dice that are from -1 to 0 as per above] 3-4 [+0lvl], 5-6 [2d4 fudge dice that differ from the negative ones...and are +0 to +1]. The math is the best on that last one...but you need to be willing to accept a d4 working opposite whether it originated from the high or low side of the d6... Whatever! Note only that you need MORE THAN ONE fudge dice to generate a curve. 3d6 makes a nice curve, 3d6 fudge dice...not quite so much, but we'll take it! It's the "mini me" of bell curves!


I gotta see what Celebrim's SIPS system mechanics are. Very intrigued.

As far as my unnamed d6 dice pool system goes...when you mention counting the pips the pros on that are it reinforces the number line (5 dots is > than 4 dots...because I'm sure I don't need to explain). If your kid gets the number line [as 4 year olds tend to do, not all of 'em...] then you can use dice with numbers and I'm going to posit that it's faster. My kids don't always correctly recognize the number of pips--as quick identification of pips is due more to recognizing the configuration [four at the corners, four at the corners but with a dot in the middle] than it is about counting them.

As far as a 4 year old being completely lost in the d6 unnamed system vs SIPS - again, that's why I want to hear more about SIPS! However, comparing d20 vs d6 dice pool, it's 1 = 1 from a 4 year old perspective. The 7 year old, well we practiced a few rolls of the d6 dice pool and she's got it. For her I can say roll 4 dice needing 3 successes on 4+ and it's fine. She COULD also add +4 to her roll of 15 on a d20 and eventually tell me she got a 19...alternatively I could subtract her +4 bonus from the target AC/difficulty and give her the modified target value and she COULD ascertain whether her die meets/exceeds or fails...but good luck with skills & spells. Skills = reading/memorization and spells = lots of things, including rolling Xd8, Xd6, etc. I'd have to help her add those multiple dice together. Sounds like SIPS lacks most of these barriers so I love the sound of that! The 4 year old would probably think SIPS, d20, d6 dice pool, etc are all rocket science. For them I'd be playing the game no matter what. In d6 I'll say "what do you want to do", he'll say "stabby stabby", I'll say "let's roll your might pool [it's 4 dice] and look for dice bigger than 4 - oh, you only got 1 you fail OR oh you got 3 great job"... And if you can't communicate clearly in run-on sentences also poorly constructed God help ya! The only benefit to the d6 [assuming I'm playing the game in any of these 3 (or other) versions]...is that you said SIPS would have to drop skills and d6 dice pool doesn't have any! That's not really a selling point It just means that I don't have a game whereas you do. Mine's just a system of mechanics, no more and no less.


I did stop to calculate odds for the remaining mechanics and found that critical miss [miss when all dice rolled show 1s] starts at 17% [for a 1d6 pool] and effectively drops to zero by 5d6. A non-negligible chance of failure at 4d6 of 0.1% - and remember we're defining 4d6 as someone who's trained in that ability.

For the critical success = 3 of a kind that are also successes for this roll...too wonky. Plus should your threshold drop to 3+ on a 4d6 pool you're already talking 7% chance...which is too high--and it shoots up pretty rapidly from there as things get easier/pools get bigger. A triplet of 5 OR 6 is a pretty happy place. The chance goes from 1% on a 3d6 pool (and of course 0% on a 1 or 2 dice pool--things that shouldn't happen to a character...) to 12% on a monstrously large 6d6 pool--that's a "godlike ability"...but if that gets too high then a triplet of 6s should still work well. Just divide those #s in half! It might go without saying, but my other adult participants LET ALONE the kids don't need to know A) the math behind pool/success/target or B) the mechanics for anything really. We'll start the game with some test rolls and scenarios - cross a narrow bridge...and outline the core mechanic, roll X dice looking for Y dice to be greater than Z. After that, we'll play some and I'll introduce luck and high/low criticals when the need arises. If the 4yr old plays, I'll handle the main mechanic for him and gloss right over the other 3 to keep it simple. That was a 5E design concept, right? That multiple people could be around the table all playing with rules modules of varying complexity. Boy how I hated that idea!!