Basic Mechanics / Fundamental Crunch

[GMMichael]

A quick scan of the published RPGs supported by ENworld gives 70 different games, many of which have different rules. Yet, many of these rules are trying to accomplish the same things. The large variety comes from different designers trying to turn real and imaginary activities and conditions into things governed by dice and/or rules.

What are these real and imaginary activities? Can they be boiled down into a short list? And to weave in another thread, which ones preclude roleplaying?

A few off the top of my head:

• Lethality of a weapon attack
• Effectiveness of armor
• Effectiveness of dodging
• Determine order for turn-based combat
• Measure character's survivability
• Measure character's power relative to other characters

 

[steenan]

Are you analyzing only D&D-like games, or RPGs in general?

I'm asking, because your list seems very narrowly focused and leaving out a great majority of activities that happen in play.

 

[GMMichael]

Well I'm talking RPGs here so yes, anything can happen in play. But in order to make rulebooks manageable, a small number of rules cover a broad range of needs.

What are the more common ones?

Nearly every game has its general-success-determination mechanic:

D&D: roll a d20 to meet or beat the difficulty class.
Dark Heresy: roll percentile up to your own score.
WoD: roll d6 die pool, counting successes (and botches)!

Three rules, one mechanic. What are the typical things that RPGs try to accomplish with their rules? Or is there no "typical?"

 

[steenan]

On the most general level, that encompasses all roleplaying games, rules describe making binding statements about the fiction. What are the limitations on each player's narrative powers and what conditions must be met to make a binding declaration.

We rarely use this perspective when discussing RPG mechanics, but it is important to be aware that this is exactly what it does. Anything more is system-specific assumptions.



Moving a little from general into concrete, we may think about what rules do in a wide range of RPGs:

1. They resolve intentions, that is, decide what are the consequences of activities undertaken by fictional characters (typically, by pointing who describes the consequences and putting limits on this description). This resolution may work on various scales, from single actions, to scenes, to whole quests/story arcs.

2. They regulate declaring facts about the setting. This covers GM's power in defining the setting in general, players' power in describing their characters' backgrounds, but also resolution of knowledge-type tests ("what have I heard about X?"), various contacts/allies abilities ("I know a guy who Y") and so on.

3. They describe how characters change as a result of actions they take and various external influences. Once again, there are different scales here, from scene level (eg. character health, various temporary conditions etc.) to campaign level (character advancement, evolving relations and beliefs etc.).



And these points may, of course, be further narrowed into specific cases, at the cost of losing generality (that is, excluding some RPGs from this description).



That is why I called your list from the first post very narrow and asked what class of games you want to describe.
The level of generality is completely different when you want to model D&D, Dogs in the Vineyard, Polaris and Chuubo's than when you want to describe D&D, Pathfinder, Dungeon World and 13th Age. In the first case, "rolling dice" and "resolving actions" are too specific; in the second case, you may compare how armor or tactical movement is modeled.

 

[Neonchameleon]

First we need to step back and ask what the purpose of RPG rules is. I have three:

1: Conflict resolution. Having the rules there means you can roll a dice and get on with whatever else you were doing.
2: Evoking a world. The details you put in the rules highlight the bits that are important
3: Guiding playstyles. Incentivising people to do the right things. At its most basic this is Arneson's XP for GP rules in the earliest versions of D&D.

 

[GMMichael]

Cool. So on the global scale, we'll divide rule purposes into three categories:

- Creating and developing characters
- Resolving character-generated uncertainties (or conflict or intentions)
- World generation (who creates what facts or entities)

That's a good start! I have to wonder how many designers actually started at that level before writing up some of today's popular games. Maybe they should have - maybe it's a good thing they didn't?

Chicken or egg question: does the world (and world rules) come first, to provide a place for characters to exist, or do the characters come first, because of the tree-falling-in-the-woods conundrum?

 

[Neonchameleon]

Cool. So on the global scale, we'll divide rule purposes into three categories:

- Creating and developing characters
- Resolving character-generated uncertainties (or conflict or intentions)
- World generation (who creates what facts or entities)

That's a good start! I have to wonder how many designers actually started at that level before writing up some of today's popular games. Maybe they should have - maybe it's a good thing they didn't?

One person who never did was E. Gary Gygax - although I think Dave Arneson did. The mantra of oD&D was "We made up some we thought would be fun". Look at any of Gygax's RPGs post D&D (especially Cyborg Commando and Dangerous Journeys:Mythus) and it's pretty obvious that Gygax didn't have a clue what made D&D so good. On the other hand oD&D was the best developed RPG there has ever been thanks to Gygax building on top of Arneson's design work and putting in a huge amount of work, effort, listening, and taking onboard feedback.

Chicken or egg question: does the world (and world rules) come first, to provide a place for characters to exist, or do the characters come first, because of the tree-falling-in-the-woods conundrum?

Why are you creating an RPG? That's what comes first. The rules are largely answering the question of how to best realise that.

 

[GMMichael]

Here's one for Cat 2 (resolving character-generated uncertainties):

The external bonus. When something benefits you, you somehow get an improved roll.

Types of this are a static bonus, an extra die to sum, or an extra die result to choose.

 

[steenan]

For a contrast, in Dungeon World (and other "powered by apocalypse" games) the external modifiers are nearly nonexistent. Rolls are always 2d6+stat.

Task difficulty and various circumstances are modeled on another level. They affect availability and necessity of various mechanical tools and stakes of various rolls.

For example, the "hack&slash" move is triggered when you attack someone in melee. If the opponent is unaware, you don't get a bonus. There is no "melee" in such situation, so you just hurt them, no rolls required. The difference between attacking a goblin and an ogre is not in the difficulty to hit, it's in what happens when you miss.

Climbing a typical wall does not require a roll. Climbing fast enough to avoid pursuit, or climbing stealthily, or climbing a wall high enough that you can get severely hurt by falling is "defying danger" and you roll for it. Depending on why you need to roll and on the specifics of the wall, the consequences of a failure will vary. Maybe you just make some noise. Maybe the rope breaks, but you manage to catch yourself in time. Maybe you scrape your elbows and hurt a finger and maybe you fall several meters to the bottom, knocking yourself unconscious and breaking a leg. The difficulty is not in the probability of success, but in how much you gain by succeeding and how much you lose by failing.


Coming from another direction, in Nobilis and Chuubo's there are difficulty modifiers, but no dice rolls. You spend from a pool of Will points, adding them to the skill you use. From this you subtract the task's difficulty or opposition's result and see what the action gave you (not only if it succeeded or failed, but also if it moved you closer to your goal, if it improved your life and how it was perceived).


In Fate you get bonuses by invoking various aspects (own aspects, scene aspects, opponent's aspects, situational aspects that were created during the scene etc.). Aspects are there by their own, but getting a bonus requires spending fate points, so even a very beneficial situation may be of no use for someone who was unwilling to accept compels and is out of FPs.

 

[GMMichael]

For a contrast, in Dungeon World (and other "powered by apocalypse" games) the external modifiers are nearly nonexistent. Rolls are always 2d6+stat.

Coming from another direction, in Nobilis and Chuubo's there are difficulty modifiers, but no dice rolls. You spend from a pool of Will points, adding them to the skill you use. From this you subtract the task's difficulty or opposition's result and see what the action gave you (not only if it succeeded or failed, but also if it moved you closer to your goal, if it improved your life and how it was perceived).

Dungeon World is a pretty radical departure from most roleplaying games I've seen. That doesn't make it wrong, of course, but that might pull it outside the thread's scope. Or, maybe DW is an informative look at exactly what we need here; it spells out in "moves" what other games accomplish with rules.

Your Nobilis example does without dice something that most RPGs do - seek certainty out of uncertainty. Conflict resolution. Determining outcomes. Is this one rule? Multiple rules? Since you mentioned using a skill, the fundamental crunch might be something like, "determining success of an opposed/unopposed character effort, improved by character skill."