Degrees of success

[BTNewman]

I'm about to convert an existing campaign to O. L. D. because I've been so impressed by the system. It does everything I've liked in other systems and puts them all together.

I really like the countdown/ticking clock mechanic and the temporary pool mechanic. But in a number of places, the rules reference figuring out the "degrees of success" or "margin of success", and I can't find any mention of degrees of success.

Example: OLD page 71, top of page, bullet 3: increase or decrease the pool by the margin of success.

Is it 1 point of difference = 1 die lost or gained? That seems very volatile.

 

[LucasC]

Is it 1 point of difference = 1 die lost or gained? That seems very volatile.

Pretty sure that is what it means. If you read the rules on chases, pg 88 of the N.E.W. game, you'll see this:

For example, during a chase, the distance from the target is increased by the amount by which thePCs lose an opposed attribute check, and decreased by the amount by which they win one. Whenthe distance reaches zero, they catch their target, but if it reaches five times their SPEED, they losehim.

 

[LucasC]

Of note, we did a chase last week and these rules worked out pretty well.

The pool started at 10 and had to get to 30 for the PCs to 'win'. The opponent was shooting at them and reduced the number by the amount of damage done each round (instead of damage).

Countdowns are different though.

Countdowns start with a base (say 6d6) and then you roll that many dice each round. The countdown is depleted only by those dice that come up 6s.

 

[BTNewman]

Thanks, the actual play example helps to visualize it. It sounds very flexible.

 

[Atom Mlatom]

I'm about to convert an existing campaign to O. L. D. because I've been so impressed by the system.

Haha I have also discussed converting my house Pathfinder campaign to O.L.D. with my group. There are definitely some growing pains associated with re-learning how to dice roll and the somewhat different combat rules for these poor d20 people, but I seem to have sold them on the "role-play" emphasis that O.L.D. manages to bring out while still being crunchy. This will probably happen with our game sooner than later, probably much sooner than the actual books get published.