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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8966255" data-attributes="member: 70468">We get our crunchy gameplay from <a href="https://middara.com" target="_blank">Middara</a>, so I’m not worried about it in the RPG space. I just really wanted something that would support the kind of exploration-driven game I run, and nothing was really cutting it in the way I wanted. Worlds Without Number came close, but it’s designed more for adventure-based sandbox play rather than exploration-driven.I got it from narrativist games. Blades in the Dark and Apocalypse World are big influences. I just have to be careful that I’m not causing problems with how I use the mechanics in my game. (Finding the right dice mechanic was hell though. I went through 2d6 → 3d6 → 2d6 → 2d10 and recently explored opposed d20 rolls before deciding to stick with 2d10.)There are some details I omitted for brevity, but I might as well include them here. Some effects request a Defense Check, which you roll plus the category (Resilience or Magic Resistance) + approach (attribute). You can opt for a Complete Success, but you must instead make the Defense Check to avoid gaining stress instead of potentially suffering the original effect (1d4, min on Complete Success, max on Critical Success). You can do the same thing for a consequence if you don’t want it. There’s a limit to how much stress you can gain (10–16, depending on Endurance and Willpower). If opting to avoid a consequence or effect puts you over, you’re unconscious until the end of the current 10-minute turn. After that, you’re back but still at your limit. Being at your limit is bad. Healing (magical and non-magical) causes stress gain, and so do some other effects that manipulate your body. Negative effects (from monsters or privation) can kill you when you’re at your limit. It’s part of the attrition model along with HP, MP, inventory, and the stuff you bring on your expedition. Anyway, being able to call for a Defense Check gives players control over how consequences affect them, but there is an element of risk to it since you may need that stress later.[sup]1[/sup]Something worth pointing out is the system is oriented towards “living world” play, so the boundaries aren’t always neat. You might be pushing into a dungeon then need to pull back to regroup and recover in town for a while. The plan is to balance that out with a faction system (both at the campaign and dungeon level), so stuff will continue to happen while you are away. Play is ultimately about managing your risk while making the best decision you can for the current situation. There are ways to influence that though (see above and also below), and smart tactics do pay off. Poisoning the dragon (<a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/commentary-thread-for-that-“describe-your-game-in-five-words”-thread.682741/post-8955689" target="_blank">post #223</a>) instead of trying to fight it directly saved on resources. That was a smart tactic. Walking right into the obvious trap and taking it in the face was not a smart tactic. Trying to carefully extract the werephasms from the crystal was smart, but it didn’t go perfectly smoothly. If they’d just shattered the crystal, that would have been bad. The party would have been fighting twelve energy-draining monsters at once. Ouch. However, based on past discussions with you, this might not be your kind of thing. I know you prefer being able to reason more fully about the move space, which I think is what you were getting at in your quote above.That’s handled by the class system. Classes are broken into groups, which provide a rank and bonus based on the rank. Classes in the warrior group add their rank to their attack roll. They’re just hands down better at killing things than the other classes. Classes in the expert group can reroll a die on a non-combat Skill Check. That’s currently limited to rank-times per session, but I’m thinking of moving it over to MP. Mages get more MP than the other classes (everyone gets 3×level naturally, but mages add 3×rank to their MP total on top of what they get naturally). Psionics (if they become a thing) will interact with MP differently. This is the emergent thing I mentioned earlier. They can use scrolls and stuff like mages, but it will (probably) screw with their MP economy. There’s space for other types of groups as well. I could see having bespoke classes and groups for an courtly intrigue campaign. The main customization is via skills, specialities, and proficiencies that you buy with EXP.There is also a mechanic for making sacrifices to do better. It’s in flux right now. In the past, it gave you extra dice. Currently, it increases the effect of your result. You can sacrifice something for +1. If it’s large, that’s another +1. If it’s high-quality (and HQ is a thing you can make in the crafting system), it’s another +1. Thus a large and high quality item is +3. Previously it was +1d6 per. I need to poke at the math to see if it does what I want. That’s one of the problems with finding the right dice and distribution for the range of modifiers I wanted to support (roughly −3 to +8). There are also mechanics for group actions and help. Your degree of success on help gives a bonus to the other person’s roll. Group actions have everyone roll and take the best, but every Failure reduces the degree of success by −1 (currently imposes a flat −2, but that seems confusing and result in situations where the consequence for Failure is nothing). You can buy off Failures by paying stress.I don’t think it’s malicious either. It’s just a risk and something that can happen with certain approaches to GMing. I think it’s important to understand when these things can happen, so everyone can make sure they’re playing in the right kind of game.Clocks help with managing effects that may trigger in the future. It’s what Apocalypse World would call “disclaiming decision-making”. I’m putting whether the guards come or how Old Gregg reacts to the mechanics instead of deciding based on my understanding of how I think things should work. Something that’s still in flux is how knowledge works. There are no knowledge checks per se. Characters have experiences they can use to roll Wisdom for Skill Checks, but you probably just know stuff related to that. There are Investigate and Research skills, but they’re new to the current revision. The idea is Investigate is something you would do while exploring to get more information on the current situation while Research would be used for long term projects during downtime. Magicians definitely will use it to add spells to their book, but anyone can use it to learn other things (e.g., maybe reveal information on a dungeon they found or something like that). It’s a work-in-progress with a lot of iteration, so stuff is up in the air still in places. This in particular. <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="😅" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f605.png" title="Grinning face with sweat    :sweat_smile:" data-shortname=":sweat_smile:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />[hr][/hr][1]: Stress evolved out of System Strain from Worlds Without Number, but there is a Blades in the Dark influence here as well. Resistance rolls are kind of like saving throws for anything, which I like because it lets you hit hard with consequences if that is what makes sense. We’ve faced some pretty nasty ones (including harm 4, which is death). Anyway, the idea behind System Strain in WWN is to allow PCs to be at max HP most of the time while still providing for attrition.</blockquote>

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