talien
Community Supporter
Hi Gang,
So I just got my hands on a Jenga set, and while I love the idea of Dread (I just ordered it), I'm not quite ready to give up on my d20 game. As usual, I'm thinking of ways to incorporate it into my upcoming D20 Modern/Call of Cthulhu campaign.
There are a couple of things that the Jenga mechanic creates.
A group sense of failure. Unlike dice rolled individually, the same "pool" of blocks affects everyone. A success on behalf of one player actually sets the next player up for the potential for more failure (assuming that the more blocks pulled, the more likely the next player will fail). This would be like each player who rolls the dice receiving a lower-numbered die -- the first player rolls a d20, the next rolls a d12, the third rolls a d10, etc. Whoever rolls last has a smaller chance of success.
No random rolls. Obviously, Jenga has an upper limit success, but in theory it's only limited by fear of failure (the # of pulls a player is willing to pull lest he cause it to collapse) and actual failure (the tower collapses). To make a dice parallel, there's not really randomness, just choice. So any roll of say, 1d10 would really be predicated on the number of pulls a player is willing to grab (up to 10).
Progressive risk. Each pull gets harder. This would be like increasing DCs for every die roll until it simply became too prohibitive to actually succeed.
A mechanic that ends. Eventually, the Jenga tower collapses. It's the equivalent of taking your dice away once you fail a roll.
I'm not addressing rebuilding the tower for the moment because I think that complicates the game mechanic significantly and haven't thought that through.
Here's two ways I thought of that might immediately change the dynamic of how the game works:
ACTION POINTS
Each player can use action points, but instead of a flat number, he can pull up to the maximum bonus allotted. Until 8th level, this is a bonus of +6, so players can pull up to six blocks to receive a bonus. This mechanic creates a pool of bonuses amongst the players with a finite limit. It also rewards daring early. If the Jenga tower falls, not only doesn't the PC receive the bonus, there are no more Action Points to apply to the session, and he automatically suffers the equivalent of a rolled 1 (a fumble, if that's appropriate).
In terms of how the Jenga tower psychologically affects the players, I imagine it would increase the sense of "taking a risk." PCs would literally be daring the Jenga tower to collapse with each risky stunt they attempt.
On the other hand, there's nothing forcing players to use action points at all, so this would only work with PCs who are really pushing the limit. There could be times where using the tower is critical, but I'm not sure enough pulls would happen to cause a collapse, or enough PCs would be that daring. If I know my players, there's one guy who would use it all the time and would guy who never would.
SANITY
Every time a player suffers a sanity loss, he is required to make a pull equal to the number of sanity points he lost. I prefer using a Will save (instead of a Sanity roll, see the rules here: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/sanity.htm) since there will be no set sanity number for each PC, but rather a pool of sanity.
Psychologically, this reinforces the dread of failure. A PC who causes the tower to collapse literally suffers a mental collapse, suffering some form of insanity (probably short-term, as I'm not fond of long-term insanity that isn't role-played out). Even rebuilding the tower wouldn't be so bad, as it would just be a matter of time before someone else suffered a mental collapse.
Unlike a shared sense of failure, this mechanic creates a hot-potato situation where the PC has no desire to pull from the tower but is forced to. It's more a question of who will snap in the game first. The Will save mechanic also spreads around the risk (as opposed to a usual mechanic, which just spirals in its failure so that one PC doesn't have a very fun time at all as he goes nuts), such that ANYONE could ultimately suffer a mental collapse under the right circumstances. And of course, in Call of Cthulhu, you can also lose sanity even if you make your save, so nobody's immune.
On the other hand, you're doing away with sanity points. No one investigator is more mentally stable than the other, although the Will save somewhat mitigates this.
I've been struggling with the concept of sanity points since I mentioned it to my gaming group. They're not fond of the idea of keeping track of yet another mechanic (or action points for that matter), but some players like the idea of mental and emotional risk. I think Jenga could visibly represent the Tower of Sanity and really do a good job of making the PCs feel that their minds are collectively fragile.
COMBINE THEM
What would it be like if I combined the tower for both action points and sanity? That is, risky players could pull from the tower to perform cool stuff, but it was also a measure of sanity as well. I'm not sure this is a good idea, as I could see the risky PCs unintentionally creating nut jobs out of their comrades.
And yet...I love the idea that although the game has a mechanic to overcome bad dice rolls, it comes at the price of sanity. Or to put it another way, risk takers really ARE nuts.
What do you think?
So I just got my hands on a Jenga set, and while I love the idea of Dread (I just ordered it), I'm not quite ready to give up on my d20 game. As usual, I'm thinking of ways to incorporate it into my upcoming D20 Modern/Call of Cthulhu campaign.
There are a couple of things that the Jenga mechanic creates.
A group sense of failure. Unlike dice rolled individually, the same "pool" of blocks affects everyone. A success on behalf of one player actually sets the next player up for the potential for more failure (assuming that the more blocks pulled, the more likely the next player will fail). This would be like each player who rolls the dice receiving a lower-numbered die -- the first player rolls a d20, the next rolls a d12, the third rolls a d10, etc. Whoever rolls last has a smaller chance of success.
No random rolls. Obviously, Jenga has an upper limit success, but in theory it's only limited by fear of failure (the # of pulls a player is willing to pull lest he cause it to collapse) and actual failure (the tower collapses). To make a dice parallel, there's not really randomness, just choice. So any roll of say, 1d10 would really be predicated on the number of pulls a player is willing to grab (up to 10).
Progressive risk. Each pull gets harder. This would be like increasing DCs for every die roll until it simply became too prohibitive to actually succeed.
A mechanic that ends. Eventually, the Jenga tower collapses. It's the equivalent of taking your dice away once you fail a roll.
I'm not addressing rebuilding the tower for the moment because I think that complicates the game mechanic significantly and haven't thought that through.
Here's two ways I thought of that might immediately change the dynamic of how the game works:
ACTION POINTS
Each player can use action points, but instead of a flat number, he can pull up to the maximum bonus allotted. Until 8th level, this is a bonus of +6, so players can pull up to six blocks to receive a bonus. This mechanic creates a pool of bonuses amongst the players with a finite limit. It also rewards daring early. If the Jenga tower falls, not only doesn't the PC receive the bonus, there are no more Action Points to apply to the session, and he automatically suffers the equivalent of a rolled 1 (a fumble, if that's appropriate).
In terms of how the Jenga tower psychologically affects the players, I imagine it would increase the sense of "taking a risk." PCs would literally be daring the Jenga tower to collapse with each risky stunt they attempt.
On the other hand, there's nothing forcing players to use action points at all, so this would only work with PCs who are really pushing the limit. There could be times where using the tower is critical, but I'm not sure enough pulls would happen to cause a collapse, or enough PCs would be that daring. If I know my players, there's one guy who would use it all the time and would guy who never would.
SANITY
Every time a player suffers a sanity loss, he is required to make a pull equal to the number of sanity points he lost. I prefer using a Will save (instead of a Sanity roll, see the rules here: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/sanity.htm) since there will be no set sanity number for each PC, but rather a pool of sanity.
Psychologically, this reinforces the dread of failure. A PC who causes the tower to collapse literally suffers a mental collapse, suffering some form of insanity (probably short-term, as I'm not fond of long-term insanity that isn't role-played out). Even rebuilding the tower wouldn't be so bad, as it would just be a matter of time before someone else suffered a mental collapse.
Unlike a shared sense of failure, this mechanic creates a hot-potato situation where the PC has no desire to pull from the tower but is forced to. It's more a question of who will snap in the game first. The Will save mechanic also spreads around the risk (as opposed to a usual mechanic, which just spirals in its failure so that one PC doesn't have a very fun time at all as he goes nuts), such that ANYONE could ultimately suffer a mental collapse under the right circumstances. And of course, in Call of Cthulhu, you can also lose sanity even if you make your save, so nobody's immune.
On the other hand, you're doing away with sanity points. No one investigator is more mentally stable than the other, although the Will save somewhat mitigates this.
I've been struggling with the concept of sanity points since I mentioned it to my gaming group. They're not fond of the idea of keeping track of yet another mechanic (or action points for that matter), but some players like the idea of mental and emotional risk. I think Jenga could visibly represent the Tower of Sanity and really do a good job of making the PCs feel that their minds are collectively fragile.
COMBINE THEM
What would it be like if I combined the tower for both action points and sanity? That is, risky players could pull from the tower to perform cool stuff, but it was also a measure of sanity as well. I'm not sure this is a good idea, as I could see the risky PCs unintentionally creating nut jobs out of their comrades.
And yet...I love the idea that although the game has a mechanic to overcome bad dice rolls, it comes at the price of sanity. Or to put it another way, risk takers really ARE nuts.
What do you think?
I think that was me...!
