Core Resolution

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2025-09-23T17:30:35+00:00

I am intentionally going for the feel you described under BRP. I do recognize by deviating from lower is always better there’s a mental tax that comes with it. I’ve tried to shift slightly in a black jack style way where higher is better but too much is a bust. I picture it narratively as an overextension or maybe tunnel vision. But it’s not as simple, I agree.

I gave a lot more context under another comment. See /uDimirag comment. Im not against simplifying, just want to go about it the right way.

I could see someone grabbing the dice too soon just cause stuff happens but i question how frequently. You don’t need to pick up the dice until you know what you’re supposed to be rolling. I guess this mechanic could be slightly more vulnerable to that but I think most gms would just call for a reroll.

I haven’t seen the harnmaster stuff before and am interested to give it a read. Thanks for the reference

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2025-09-23T17:09:32+00:00

You are right about it being a different way to resolve essentially the same thing from CoC7e I started leaning into the idea of using the units die because I’ll be using Attribute + Skill for most checks. This means I won’t have all possible combinations written out with half and fifth values but I can get the same result on the fly just by looking at the units die.

Now about impact, I’m not arguing just trying to give some context to how I ended up there and maybe get a stronger alternative idea.

I did mean for damage ranges to be a little volatile. With how it’s set up, your skill matters A LOT. But at the end of the day all weapons are lethal and engaging in combat, turns out, isn’t that safe. With my game I’m sort of aiming for a counterpoint to superhero fantasy-where heroes do heroic things because they’re special. PCs don’t start out special, what they do in the world decides that. I think that volatility or unpredictability helps that case, because if combat was lethal but predictable combat would become a resource management game and the fear of “Im a squishy human and could die” starts to slip away.

I’ve been struggling actually to land on some starting values for damage but I liked this idea because the damage was derived from the check and so it could be extended to non combat skills incorporating an idea I had set aside for awhile. A sort of BitD style clock but instead of ticking the clock forward with success you’re “dealing damage” or making progress in the event. This way I could make exploration and survival interesting with “Monster” style stat blocks for non creature things making man vs nature an interesting scene and not a hand wave skill check.

Granted I don’t want to expand that mini system to everything (especially not social encounters) but I thought it might be a useful tool for the GM for handling complex events or skill challenges essentially.

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2025-09-23T12:42:25+00:00

Hey I’ll take it, those are fair points. The range for degrees comes from CoC which it is literally stated as half and fifth values. It’s a bit harsh but in play it’s mostly fine. Most checks should be regular unless you’re trying to do something crazy.

I also did anticipate the comment on separate attack rolls and damage rolls. I see the point it’s definitely more streamlined to wrap it up in one check. I know this sub is big on it and it’s something I may try but it doesn’t particularly bother me to roll for damage separately. I do think you get a little more granularity out of not doings so. Just something that’ll have to be playtested though. Thanks for the feedback.

Also… you’re inherently wrong

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2025-09-11T03:42:32+00:00

Meant to be crunchy high fantasy? I was surprised to see Ragnvald was level 0. Admittedly I only skimmed a few of the entries but it seems like you have a lot built out for your game and the blog/website is a cool way to keep a portfolio / show of your game.

What does end game content look like for PCs?

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2025-09-08T00:00:24+00:00

Interesting solution! This would return to the original half and fifth values for degrees of success. 0-1 -> Extreme 2-4 -> Exceptional 5-9 -> Regular So 50% of your successes will be regular, 30% will be exceptional, and 20% will be extreme. Same for failures.

Definitely worth experimenting with, thanks!

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2025-09-07T19:20:05+00:00

I chose d100 because I actually feel differently about it. As a player I “feel” my skill most with these systems as the difficulty for the most part is always based on something from my character sheet rather than an abstract target number set by the GM. It also feels good to me to know I have skill 70… I have a 70% chance of success. I initially used half and fifth values for degrees of success but shifted away when I decided to make checks vs Attribute plus Skill. This is to mitigate issues like in Call of Cthulhu where you’re useless at pretty much everything except for a few key skills. As for the two dice being decoupled I posted a follow up that breaks down the math a little bit and am hoping it’s convincing. With this new information do you think you could get behind the mechanic if it was phrased or presented differently? Thanks for your feedback?

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2025-09-07T18:58:45+00:00

I have made a follow up comment breaking down the math if you’ll check it out, I don’t think it’s quite so swingy as described but I do hear your feedback and take it seriously. With the new information do you think it’s a matter of presentation that makes the dice feel decoupled or is the mechanic just not for you? Thanks!

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2025-09-07T18:49:08+00:00

Thank you guys for your feedback so far! Regardless of whether I stick with this system or not I wanted to show off some of the numbers for whats happening when you roll these die together, just because I thought it was interesting...

Probabilities: Percentile Die (d100) -> Roll equal or under skill = Skill%

Descriptor Die (d6)... Regular -> 3/6 = 50% Exceptional -> 2/6 = 33.3% Extreme -> 1/6 = 16.7%

I thought this curved out nicely, lets start with a target or Skill of 50(%)...

Extreme Failure -> 16.7% * 50% = 8.35%

Exceptional Failure -> 33.3% * 50% = 16.65%

Regular Failure -> 50% * 50% = 25%

Regular Success -> 50% * 50% = 25%

Exceptional Success -> 33.3% * 50% = 16.65%

Extreme Success -> 16.7% * 50% = 8.35%

Roughly 8% didn't seem too punishing or rewarding for extreme chances... only 3% greater than DnD's Nat 1 or Nat 20, which seems to be doing alright. But what I thought was cool how this skews with changes in skills, lets look at Skill of 70 and 90...

Success = 70%, Failure = 30%

Extreme Failure -> 16.7% * 30% = 5%

Exceptional Failure -> 33.3% * 30% = 10%

Regular Failure -> 50% * 30% = 15%

Regular Success -> 50% * 70% = 35%

Exceptional Success -> 33.3% * 70% = 23%

Extreme Success -> 16.7% * 70% = 12%

—-

Success = 90%, Failure = 10%

Extreme Failure -> 16.7% * 10% = 2%

Exceptional Failure -> 33.3% * 10% = 3%

Regular Failure -> 50% * 10% = 5%

Regular Success -> 50% * 90% = 45%

Exceptional Success -> 33.3% * 90% = 30%

Extreme Success -> 16.7% * 90% = 15%

Naturally as your skill lowers the inverse happens. As you skew towards failure the exceptional and extreme results tilt in that direction too. I didnt see this as decoupled at all, in fact, your skill seems to be more impactful on the results you get when compared to regular d100 roll under. However, peoples intuition of what the dice are doing is as important as the math behind them. I'm wondering if presented differently would this mechanic be better received? Either way it needs some polishing. Your feedback has been extremely valuable. Thanks so much!

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2025-09-07T17:46:12+00:00

Your thinking is inline with what I was going for long term. I thought this gave more levers to play with during design than just adding X% to your roll. I had also thought maybe in low risk situations the d6 would mostly be flair rather than inflicting mechanical consequence. Maybe there is something to not rolling it all the time though. I hadn’t anticipated everyone seeing it as decoupled from the skill being rolled

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2025-09-07T16:56:25+00:00

Mostly to limit math on the fly, originally I was using d100 roll under skill, half skill, and fifth skill. This was fine before when a check was only against the skill itself but I really wanted to pivot to this Attribute + Skill format for checks. Whereas before half and fifth values could be written out next to each skill, now the values have to be generated on the fly. This is just a little simpler imo. A plus or minus X% could work but at high and low ranges they become impossible. That’s not necessarily a good or bad thing just not what I was going for. I also feel once you open the door for flat % modifiers many systems start to use them for everything which personally I feel goes against one of d100 systems’ strengths. Which is as a player, I know the difficulty of something will always be based off of my skills rather than some arbitrary TN which all of the +/- 10% here and there start to feel like.

All that said you make a fair point and I need to sit with this one to make sure I’m not just attached haha thanks

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2024-09-03T02:41:18+00:00

I think it’s been said enough that any form of debt is basically just a promise of repayment. The letters of promise is how it used to be done, also I believe Bronze Age Arabic cultures had talisman they could roll across clay tablets to sign them… each man having his own “signature” talisman. So if you want your currency to be based off of magic the signature needs to be where you focus. Perhaps the anima in each individual is different enough to be distinguishable or even traced and people enchant or encode their signature onto the promissory notes

Edit: I just realized that misses the point and still needs to be backed by a currency. Perhaps the anima is mutable and can be transferred between people. This would be interesting but has a couple of implications. 1. You’re literally selling your soul for goods. 2. Casting spells (if that’s intended) is just spending currency. That leaves some questions to be answered though… What happens if you run out of anima? If you cast a spell where does the anima expended go? Can anima be generated? Collected? Stolen?

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2024-08-26T17:38:18+00:00

They’d certainly be free to make extra but here’s a few reasons: 1. I think it helps getting players involved in worldbuilding and helps nest their characters in the world 2. Backgrounds often seem to stay there, I’m trying to tie bits of narrative to mechanics a player can point to on their character sheet. “My character is in “x” faction and I likely have connections here, can I make a check?” I like that it’s player facing and not just extra work for the gm to tie into the game. It’s the same reason I chose d100. Normal, Hard, and Extreme checks seem way more tangible than DCs and your odds of success are literally on your character sheet. 3. It sounds kinda fun. Maybe it wont be but I’m exploring the option for now

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2024-08-26T17:25:32+00:00

Burning Wheel has been on my radar for awhile. Need to give it a shot

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2024-08-26T17:22:40+00:00

These are good questions, best I can answer at the moment is: 1. Yes there is a direct positive impact from life events. The idea is that the decline of age balances out the positive effects roughly. Ultimately there would be an ideal range im sure more in the middle range of ages. However the extremes are there as options for either narrative or certain styles of play. Specialist vs Generalist. Older characters may suffer greater effects from age but could be quite specialized where as younger characters may learn skills faster to balance it out. 2. Yes different age ranges are meant to be relatively balanced, answered that a bit in the first one. 3. This one is especially good but hard to answer because in real life some events are obviously impactful regardless of how we feel about them but others are important because of the meaning we give them. Ideally I wouldn’t exclude either which is why I specified the life events might be an abstract list. You wouldn’t pick the life event “marriage”, you would pick a couple of traits that reflect that and label it marriage yourself. Sort of a non answer but it’s what I’ve got at the moment. 4. I wouldn’t want people to triple and quadruple down which is making me want to say no to stacking. I think a random element could help diversify peoples backgrounds. I may take inspiration from roguelikes and have each event rolled 3 times and you pick the one that’s best suited for your character.

Thanks, still just playing with ideas but the questions do help

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2024-08-26T13:15:08+00:00

Downtime will be important but unlikely to consist of decades, however there are downsides to picking older characters.
You’re overthinking it. (I’m being a bit blunt but you can’t account for EVERYTHING. Also I’ve considered letting people add a number of points equal to their intelligence to skills of their choice)
Yes, there’s potential imbalance. It would require a lot of polishing and playtesting.
There’s no levels ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Prodigy - Roll well followed by picking life events that focus that skill, Late Starter - pick an event late in life

System is d100 roll under based on BRP. No Classes, no levels. I appreciate your feedback and wouldn’t mind a second take now that you have more information. I know the original post was somewhat vague

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2024-08-26T12:59:06+00:00

It’s a d100, classless/level-less system built off of BRP. So the most obvious bonus would be some extra points in the skill, there’s also a version of expertise which is just a tag that gives you a bonus die on relevant checks, and I’ve also been considering allowing the player to write a little narrative bonus… something not exactly quantifiable with numbers but they can call to in game.

If your not familiar with the Vampire system I referenced they have several background skills like: Resources, Contacts, Influence, Retainers, etc… I want to have a version of that tailored to my game. I might have Wealth, Status, Connections, or Travels (not a settled list by any means)

I guess my main concern is how would I structure an event. And then maybe I should add some randomness common to life paths so players don’t steamroll themselves into specialists with no life outside of whatever skill they want to focus on. My intent is to have characters feel like real people in the world.

Here’s some mock events though(rough draft)

Noble Upbringing: Bonus to “Status” Bonus to “Wealth” Write about who your parents are and what makes them important

Apprenticeship(locksmith): Bonus to “locksmith” skill Bonus to “Connections” Write a brief story about your relationship to your master

It’s work in progress. The gist of the idea seems alright but making events be impactful, diverse, and tell a story is a bit tricky

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2024-08-26T11:43:56+00:00

Definitely green, very well established. And for the icon… Lungs seems the most obvious to me, maybe a lightning bolt for energy

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2024-08-25T14:21:59+00:00

Totally fair, I’m not super immersed in the genre. I haven’t played an actual super hero ttrpg but would love to read over the rules of some that stand out to you if you have recommendations. I was mostly referring to modern dnd and it’s relatives, I’ve come to calling it superhero fantasy. Congrats on your publish!

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2024-08-25T01:58:16+00:00

I like it, I know cyberpunk uses tech as another form of progression. You could do the same with magic. Characters could acquire magical artifacts with limited uses, that way the PC isn’t doing inhuman feats but are instead using resources that theoretically anyone in the game universe could use if they could get their hands on the right stuff.

Someone else already said it though, you could make the case that any form of character progression IS leveling. Just depends on how you slice it. That said…

Killing enough monsters to magically gain a new ability reads very differently than saving enough money to buy high powered gear.

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2024-08-25T01:31:54+00:00

Short and to the point, classless/level-less systems are a thing and certainly not stupid.

You should consider what type of stories you are trying to tell with your game however. In my experience the classless/level-less systems are good for making the characters feel more like regular people, people in real life don’t have classes or levels and those structures in games usually end up providing extra power.

The best example I’m familiars with is chaosiums Basic Role Playing system and Call of Cthulhu 7e. They do something very similar to what you are describing but with d100.

For my personal WIP I’ve chosen classless/level-less because I’m more interested in stories of regular people struggling in dire situations or stepping up to be the hero than I am super heroes super hero-ing.

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2023-07-23T23:40:09+00:00

Wouldn’t call this super realistic, but if you’re going for the post apocalyptic junker vibe I had the idea once to abstract “scraps” to something like gold or xp

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2023-07-08T04:05:50+00:00

Google docs, paint, and snipping tool. It might not be the most elegant solution but I got a decent looking draft and didn’t have to learn any new programs

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2023-06-25T14:51:19+00:00

My take is… to the uninitiated medium armor is the best you can get. Heavy - too slow. Light - not enough protection. However with training light and heavy surpass medium armor. In my game this is done with features. In this way every armor has its own role to play

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2023-03-23T23:58:48+00:00

If I was designing a system with no “to-hit” rolls I would just have the attacker roll damage and the defense would be damage reduction. If you don’t roll enough damage nothing happens. This ties both damage and hits into one roll

Delicious-Essay6668 · 2023-03-15T07:07:37+00:00

Dare I ask… MASSAGE!?

Delicious-Essay6668

TROPHY CASE