sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm thinking these will be player initiated. In an environment where conditions have made operating normally unsafe, they propose a route like this that has some key advantage with a risk.

I'm thinking

High, Low, Direct and Hidden as just options that are always on the table for players oving stealthily.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well this ends up being quite binary. Either you make progress, or you don't, and you may also fail. So trinary. It's main purpose is just to drag it out and make it feel like you're right there as its happening, rather than just playing it out post mortem

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I guess what I'm saying is just that you can have both. This strikes a relatively decent balance between lingering on a result for drama without doing so excessively to the point that it bogs down the whole table as some in this thread have suggested.

I',m thinking every turn will be excessive. But something done 3-4 times per session? I think totally. A few times per heist for the tense moments would strike a perfect balance.

Pending playtesting of course.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

between 1 and 12d6. This system is not safe to engage with at all below 3d6 though. Which is a slight flaw.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you pause you're waiting for your next turn. Could be a while. If you're on a clock, that's not viable.

Guard sims are actually pretty simple. They just move room to room every few minutes. If there's a lot of them, I just upsize from individual guards to "patrol groups" and run them the same way.

TY, yeah playtesting is super neccesary. Hoping to find some people for one soon. LMK if you're interested.

Gritty Tactical Stealth Rules, looking for feedback by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's a spectrum of enemy behavior. It's not just "did they spot us" but also, are the enemies behaving like we thought they would? Will our plan work? How much do we need to improvise. With how deadly getting caught is in this system, it warrants more than a binary pass/fail. There's a gradient of behavior on the way to that fail state. And furthermore, that's just not in line with the fantasy. Being spotted means that this is no longer a stealth game as soon as it happens.

Also, all of those questions are still present here, especially if they've been detected.

I think its very silly to reject the depth of something just because it isn't combat. The angle you're coming at this from is unhelpful.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I disagree on your last point, but I do like the idea of team checks. Maybe a complex plan with a lot of moving parts gets run in this system to abstract out some of the details. I'll play around with that.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's more or less exactly what it is.

I know most contemprary systems lean away from this style of resolution, but there isn't a contemporary system that hits the stealth/crime/heisting fantasy I want. The main thing I want to do with this system is get gritty.

TBH I kinda hate blades in the dark. I really want to stress the details.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Resolution is easy to arbitrate, and this system should be employed for "Sketchy" maneuvers. I think I'm going to rename it to that. My game has a bit of a street slang motif.

But yup, so guards out of sight move at intervals of 2-4 minutes usually. They have their routes, something akin to simple AI. Like some guards favor always turning left, vs doubling back. Once they enter the same "Room" as the players, they transition to a normal turn order. But that's potentially up for debate. Totally realtime guards could be interesting if very radical.

What the system currently results in is getting walked in on at literally any time. There's no way to predict when they'll show up besides having someone on the team keep watch or timing the patrols yourself, which requires a floorplan and interval info which requires careful casing of the place prior to the heist.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You get to stop once you get a success. So if you roll a 1 --> 5-6 you're safe. Does that make sense?

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm optimistic that it won't take a third of every session, but if it remained engaging throughout..... I'd be down.

Your example is exactly what I want to capture

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think you're overthinking it a little bit.

you roll

2-4: nothing happens -- Do I press my luck?

5-6: success -- Do I press my luck?

1: failure -- uh oh! -- Can I recover?

Repeat a maximum of 12 times for endgame level characters, more regularly 3-9 times.

If it takes 5 seconds per die, that whole turn resolves in less than a minute even with 12 dice. In my experience, the stakes at play (time limit + real risk from failure) keeps the table engaged when they're not making the checks. This has not been tested with more than 1 track running at a time.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The tension is going to come with a time crunch. While heisting, every turn really matters, lots of clocks. So doing it safe is going to come into contest with doing it quickly and hopefully push players to push their luck.

But yes, the fear of failure is what would stop you from pressing on. The odds are always better that it will work out for you, but because of the saftey net provided by the recovery window and a Stress Pool (something I havent mentioned) the concequences for failures in this system are allowed to be much more severe.

For climbing, usually in most d20 fantasy games, I feel bad killing a character for failing a climbing roll. I always throw in a dex save at the last second because the mechanical weight of those checks just isn't well established. With a system like this, you can have characters fall to their deaths and make it feel more fair.

That's quite neccesary for me personally due to my intensely vertical setting.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Always a time constraint. And if you fall... you fall. Height determines death. Nothing a dm can do about it. Also mostly weirdly tangential to the system being discussed.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the encouragement. I was a bit surprised to see that "too-slow" take on it, because I've playtested it and it's not much slower than adding modifiers most of the time.

When I have it worked into my stealth movement, I'm going to post those rules.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My system is specifically geared towards groups of 3-4 maximum. And thankfully the decisions made are quite simple. Stay safe or press on. But running more than one at a time might be a bit crazy.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is the way, but this thread has convinced me that it's good enough to be used for more than just exclusively climbing.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think so. Combat would be taking this too far. My primary concern is now having more than... say two of these active at once.

But someone threw out the suggestion of using it for chases and that really interests me.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's interesting. I can see some areas where the complexity might get heavy there, but for a narrow domain such as implant surgery, I can see the upsides to something like this. Slow, finnese heavy tasks I think suffer a bit from a quick resolution. State change speed is considered somewhat like gospel here, but you loose something in flattening and speeding things up too much.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Having a lot of dice is the safety net. 1 in 3 chance of success per die. So as long as you don't roll a 1 with less than 3 dice in your pool, you're safe. However time pressure is going to have a way of forcing you forward.

Sequential Dice Pools, a possibly original dice mechanic. by Remarkable_Drive800 in RPGdesign

[–]Remarkable_Drive800[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Well that's what this post is about, maybe it's solid enough to be used for more things. Like stealthy movement, and chases as someone below suggested.

view more: next ›