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AWW: A Wilder Reimagining
Oct. 12th, 2014 09:38 amWhile I like the probability range of the number system I came up with last week, I've still had some lingering doubts about the mechanical side of A Wilder World that it didn't solve... a general concern that the game mechanics didn't match up well with the character creation system, and that while the heart of the character creation system was about what I wanted it to be, the game itself wasn't. The rules that I had felt more like an enclosure than a skeletal framework, and while I was anticipating and accommodating all manner of wild ideas, it was a bit mechanic-heavy for the kind of free-form, high-flying adventures I envisioned.
Yesterday, I realized that the main problem isn't in the mechanics but rather this was an outgrowth of part of my approach in character creation system. Specifically, the stat system. The incredibly detailed and incredibly strong (in terms of impact on your capabilities) attribute system is not bad in and of itself, but it's somewhat like a redundant/conflicting system alongside the idea that you define your character by taking two concepts and mashing them together.
The core of the hybrid character thing should be that if you take two qualities -- say Acrobat and Tracker -- then that's all you need to do to establish your character as an acrobat and a tracker. Requiring you to put points into Agility and Perception on top of that choice is another layer of unnecessary complexity for character creation, and it adds more complexity to the rules and the establishment of character abilities, because the Acrobat has to be good at acrobating in a way that goes beyond high agility
So I went back to the idea that a player should be able to pick two qualities and just sort of go with them, hit the ground running. That an Acrobat would embody the quality of agility, an Archer would embody the quality of targeting, a Warrior would embody the quality of prowess, and so on.
And what I've come up with is this:
First, your character qualities determine how good you are at an area over all. In the absence of any special ability or weakness, you have a rating of green (3) in all areas. The number in parentheses after the rating's color is the number of dice you roll when making a check in the area. Each rating has a color to help players conceive of them and also to set ratings apart from other numbers (like bonuses). Below green are yellow (2) and red (1), and above it is copper (4), silver (5), gold (6), platinum (7), and mithril (8).
A character quality (like Acrobat, Archer, Warrior) that is narrowly focused in a single area will generally give you a silver (5) rating in their area. One that is more scattered will tend to give you copper (4) ratings in multiple areas. So an Acrobat would be silver (5) in agility, a Smooth Talker would be silver (5) in persuasion, and a Treasure Hunter would be silver (5) in object liberation, but a Street Rat might be copper (4) in all of those areas.
Note that while some of these areas of expertise overlap closely with things I've used with attributes, as with bonuses that character qualities provided in the previous iteration, the area of expertise that the rating applies can be defined more broadly/generally.
If you have two ratings that could apply, you use the higher one. If they're equal or within one level of each other (an Acrobat/Street Rat trying to stay one jump ahead of the breadline, for instance), you can shift up one. Some character qualities also have a circumstance or area where you gain a "rating boost", which shifts it up one. (For instance, the Coward quality gets a rating boost where success means escaping danger). These two benefits stack, but you can only have one of each. You can't combine a bunch of copper (4) ratings to get gold (5), for instance.
How do attributes apply?
Well, I'm more or less ditching the idea that you can represent a superhuman/legendary level of capability through attributes alone. It's not a bad idea, but it's something that is at odds with the basic concept of character-defining character qualities. Instead, I'm replacing with the idea that attributes provide a range of ability within a rating... they range from -3 to +3. An Acrobat with a silver (5) rating in agility-related pursuits would be better than anyone with a lower rating, but might be slightly better or worse than other silver (5) rated Acrobats. If the Acrobat has an Agility score of -3 and a Street Rat has an Agility score of +3, they'll be pretty close to evenly matched, with the slight statistical edge to the Acrobat (0.5 higher average, and a slightly more predictable average roll).
My thought right now is that a character by default will have 0 in all areas, and must take a negative modifier for every positive one. This effectively makes attributes an added layer of detail you can optionally use for your character. The number and nature of attributes in use is likely to change as I develop this idea, as some of them (Healing for sure, possibly Magic) don't mesh well with the new approach to things.
I said I'm more or less ditching the idea that you can define your character as being uncommonly good in an area outside of a character quality, but the "less" is that I'm considering schemes that would let you get a copper (4) rating in an attribute's area outside the quality system. I have a couple different ideas there.
Difficulties/target numbers for tasks will be calibrated around the rating level most expected to deal with them. So a task that's meant to be easy for a green (3) rating will have a target number of 7, and one that's meant to be hard would have a target number of 14, and one that's meant to be average challenge might have a target number of 10. In terms of probability, the easy task for green would be average for red (2), and the hard task for green would be average for copper (4).
The break down of abilities into solid ratings that probabilities can be distributed around is also meant to more easily allow the use of what I'll call the "narrative negotiation" approach, which is basically the idea that if you have a list of things that you're really good at, and the point of your character is that you're good at them, then you shouldn't always have to roll in situations where someone else would. In a no-pressure situation, the Storyteller can take the fact that you have a silver (5) or gold (6) rating in something into account and just handwave the roll, speeding up game play. In particular, contests between characters with two or more differences in ratings are usually skipped, unless the lower rated character is a main character. This kind thing happens to some degree in almost every game played, in practice, but in keeping with the general theme of A Wilder World being strongly defined characters allowing for high-flying action, it's a bit more explicitly written in.
This change is going to result in drastically slimmed down rules over all, but in particular I'm taking a weedwhacker to the combat rules, which had a lot of appendixes and appendages designed to match the glorious specificity of the attribute system. What I'm looking to end up with is a system that balances a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach with players always having a solid idea what it's possible for their characters to do. Combat is going to be a lot less D&D-ish in many ways, less concerned with defining effects of attacks in minute details and more concerned with just making sure it's clear what sorts of things are possible.
The "safety dice" mechanic I described in the previous post are likely to still exist, although less prominently. They won't be the main vehicle for representing uncommon skill in an area, but may be used to represent increasing levels of skill. A more experienced Acrobat might still have silver (5) or gold (6) rating, but with a few safety dice. Or they might be how the benefit of equipment is represented. Higher quality thieves' tools do not pick the lock for you so they don't shift your rating, but they make success more likely within your actual skill level.
Yesterday, I realized that the main problem isn't in the mechanics but rather this was an outgrowth of part of my approach in character creation system. Specifically, the stat system. The incredibly detailed and incredibly strong (in terms of impact on your capabilities) attribute system is not bad in and of itself, but it's somewhat like a redundant/conflicting system alongside the idea that you define your character by taking two concepts and mashing them together.
The core of the hybrid character thing should be that if you take two qualities -- say Acrobat and Tracker -- then that's all you need to do to establish your character as an acrobat and a tracker. Requiring you to put points into Agility and Perception on top of that choice is another layer of unnecessary complexity for character creation, and it adds more complexity to the rules and the establishment of character abilities, because the Acrobat has to be good at acrobating in a way that goes beyond high agility
So I went back to the idea that a player should be able to pick two qualities and just sort of go with them, hit the ground running. That an Acrobat would embody the quality of agility, an Archer would embody the quality of targeting, a Warrior would embody the quality of prowess, and so on.
And what I've come up with is this:
First, your character qualities determine how good you are at an area over all. In the absence of any special ability or weakness, you have a rating of green (3) in all areas. The number in parentheses after the rating's color is the number of dice you roll when making a check in the area. Each rating has a color to help players conceive of them and also to set ratings apart from other numbers (like bonuses). Below green are yellow (2) and red (1), and above it is copper (4), silver (5), gold (6), platinum (7), and mithril (8).
A character quality (like Acrobat, Archer, Warrior) that is narrowly focused in a single area will generally give you a silver (5) rating in their area. One that is more scattered will tend to give you copper (4) ratings in multiple areas. So an Acrobat would be silver (5) in agility, a Smooth Talker would be silver (5) in persuasion, and a Treasure Hunter would be silver (5) in object liberation, but a Street Rat might be copper (4) in all of those areas.
Note that while some of these areas of expertise overlap closely with things I've used with attributes, as with bonuses that character qualities provided in the previous iteration, the area of expertise that the rating applies can be defined more broadly/generally.
If you have two ratings that could apply, you use the higher one. If they're equal or within one level of each other (an Acrobat/Street Rat trying to stay one jump ahead of the breadline, for instance), you can shift up one. Some character qualities also have a circumstance or area where you gain a "rating boost", which shifts it up one. (For instance, the Coward quality gets a rating boost where success means escaping danger). These two benefits stack, but you can only have one of each. You can't combine a bunch of copper (4) ratings to get gold (5), for instance.
How do attributes apply?
Well, I'm more or less ditching the idea that you can represent a superhuman/legendary level of capability through attributes alone. It's not a bad idea, but it's something that is at odds with the basic concept of character-defining character qualities. Instead, I'm replacing with the idea that attributes provide a range of ability within a rating... they range from -3 to +3. An Acrobat with a silver (5) rating in agility-related pursuits would be better than anyone with a lower rating, but might be slightly better or worse than other silver (5) rated Acrobats. If the Acrobat has an Agility score of -3 and a Street Rat has an Agility score of +3, they'll be pretty close to evenly matched, with the slight statistical edge to the Acrobat (0.5 higher average, and a slightly more predictable average roll).
My thought right now is that a character by default will have 0 in all areas, and must take a negative modifier for every positive one. This effectively makes attributes an added layer of detail you can optionally use for your character. The number and nature of attributes in use is likely to change as I develop this idea, as some of them (Healing for sure, possibly Magic) don't mesh well with the new approach to things.
I said I'm more or less ditching the idea that you can define your character as being uncommonly good in an area outside of a character quality, but the "less" is that I'm considering schemes that would let you get a copper (4) rating in an attribute's area outside the quality system. I have a couple different ideas there.
Difficulties/target numbers for tasks will be calibrated around the rating level most expected to deal with them. So a task that's meant to be easy for a green (3) rating will have a target number of 7, and one that's meant to be hard would have a target number of 14, and one that's meant to be average challenge might have a target number of 10. In terms of probability, the easy task for green would be average for red (2), and the hard task for green would be average for copper (4).
The break down of abilities into solid ratings that probabilities can be distributed around is also meant to more easily allow the use of what I'll call the "narrative negotiation" approach, which is basically the idea that if you have a list of things that you're really good at, and the point of your character is that you're good at them, then you shouldn't always have to roll in situations where someone else would. In a no-pressure situation, the Storyteller can take the fact that you have a silver (5) or gold (6) rating in something into account and just handwave the roll, speeding up game play. In particular, contests between characters with two or more differences in ratings are usually skipped, unless the lower rated character is a main character. This kind thing happens to some degree in almost every game played, in practice, but in keeping with the general theme of A Wilder World being strongly defined characters allowing for high-flying action, it's a bit more explicitly written in.
This change is going to result in drastically slimmed down rules over all, but in particular I'm taking a weedwhacker to the combat rules, which had a lot of appendixes and appendages designed to match the glorious specificity of the attribute system. What I'm looking to end up with is a system that balances a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach with players always having a solid idea what it's possible for their characters to do. Combat is going to be a lot less D&D-ish in many ways, less concerned with defining effects of attacks in minute details and more concerned with just making sure it's clear what sorts of things are possible.
The "safety dice" mechanic I described in the previous post are likely to still exist, although less prominently. They won't be the main vehicle for representing uncommon skill in an area, but may be used to represent increasing levels of skill. A more experienced Acrobat might still have silver (5) or gold (6) rating, but with a few safety dice. Or they might be how the benefit of equipment is represented. Higher quality thieves' tools do not pick the lock for you so they don't shift your rating, but they make success more likely within your actual skill level.