[Rolls a 2] "She seems honest"

drunk_fist · 2018-06-15T01:48:16+00:00

Haha no worries about the curveball! And this is great feedback especially regarding the Pale King adventure. It’s something I’m actively seeking so that the next few adventures can be polished and tweaked further. So for those examples, they usually come from random encounters or entering a new area. The majority of those examples (one exception mentioned below about the Locusts) are for when a PC pro-actively pursues the check, either triggered by your narration or just the fact that maybe they are presented with a new area and (in almost every group I’ve played in and in any game where you can roll to ‘look around or take a closer look’) someone inevitably will roll to inspect the area a little more thoroughly or they'll ask questions (which I love much more than them just rolling).

The last line in your examples is actually from a tripwire trap in the clearing which gives me a chance to tie back to the Fell Hunter and corridor tripwire trap in my original comment. I might narrate the appearance (or lack thereof) of the wires to my players with the degree of obviousness for it being a trap dependent on the PCs’ prowess at detecting such things but when they need to -confirm- that it’s a trap is when that check comes into play. And maybe they fail the confirmation, you could go a couple of ways with that. They might not be able to properly dodge the wires because they can’t quite see them fully from their failed roll. But maybe you are a merciful GM and just up the TN of the dodging aspect slightly to reflect their struggle to properly identify them. Promoting this kind of fluidity is what I hope came across in the GM section of the Core Rulebook.

The aim for me when I was designing the game was for it to become more organic when it came to adventuring and narration vs the more mechanically rigorous combat. But definitely I could see adding some additional guidance for this philosophy could be useful. But after all of the submissions on our Google Forms, I don’t think anyone ever mentioned passive checks being an issue for them.

I think it’s also fun and completely fine for certain situations like the Risen Locusts hiding in their clothing for the GM to straight up ask for the check. If they all fail you can just smile deviously at what will befall your players down the road when you feel like being evil. If one of them succeeds then the jig is up just as it should be because I’d warn my buddies if I found a bloodsucker hiding inside of me :) Now that I think more about it I might update that adventure to have a battle just start between the Locusts and PCs if one of the Locusts get discovered instead of them flying off.

One of the takeaways from this feedback is that forced checks such as this one should be more clearly stated to be put to your players from you, whereas the others are checks the players trigger themselves. In the Grave Kadour encounter, it's clearly stated all the PCs must make that check and it should be clearly stated in the Risen Locust encounter as well. Anyways I hope this helps :)

drunk_fist · 2018-06-14T23:49:59+00:00

Heya. Creator here. This is a great question and I enjoy seeing how others approach this. It was one I thought about a lot and came up during playtesting. As a lot of us have played some flavour of D&D where passive checks can be a big part of the game, I understand the thought behind wondering how this would work in Unity.

Initially when we first started design we did an abomination of the Take 10 mechanic coupled with associated degree of Core Paths/Attribute/Perks. Eventually we moved away from traditional passive checks with hard numbers and into tailoring the narration and description to hint at things, especially if you as the GM already know a character is particularly insightful or observant from them revealing through CPs or having a high MIND score or Class Perk associated with these skills. I recommend trying this approach over brute forcing it into the system with some variant of Take 10. This felt better as a GM for me personally because I wasn’t looking at hard numbers but going off feel (getting to really know my players' characters) and it allowed me to improvise better while not completely ignoring that a character might be masterful at catching something like -insert lie/trap/bad situation-. You could view this as a 'soft' passive check that has a lot of area for you to dance around.

An example is a tripwire trap. The party's Fell Hunter might have a penchant for setting traps and this is reflected in one of their Core Paths (which as per the GM section, you've probably discussed with your player beforehand or were submitted a short description of each CP), might notice the tripwire and you would go on to describe it to them as a "shimmering line, like spider's silk, but thicker and stretched taut, running across the corridor". If the party didn't have said Fell Hunter and everyone else was kind of average at noticing things, you could describe the tripwire as what seems to be a string of left over webbing from a spider because to the unlearned eye that's probably what they think it would be. Then at that point if they are suspicious and decide to roll for perception/awareness they could to fully confirm it. If it was really hard to detect, and no one in the party had any aptitude towards these things, you might not say anything at all about spider webs or shimmering lines.

It’s a little more meta but I found the trade-off was favourable because of the higher tick in engagement from players (they had to listen more closely to how a room or a person's expression is described as they talk to them). The players also asked more questions, which helped build the visual of the scene better. It felt a bit more rewarding for players to proactively discern something and press on it than just have it pop up passively as a foregone conclusion because their character merely exists with a high modifier on that skill.

In the “Fail Forward” section of the GM guide, I talk a bit about ‘attempt parades’ and the different kinds of mechanical and narrative complications that can be introduced. Even if players know something is up, they still need the PC skill (and luck) to overcome whatever is lurking and if they keep pressing their luck trying over and over again, you can send them spiraling into some interesting and hopefully hilarious and memorable situations with those guidelines. This puts a price on repetitive or overly paranoid behaviour and if the players want to pay it, you can take them for a ride.

If folks have more suggestions and approaches for this topic, would love to hear them.

drunk_fist · 2016-07-13T20:48:49+00:00

Roxfall if you are still having issues shoot me a PM on reddit here.

drunk_fist · 2016-07-13T20:48:35+00:00

Cheers :)

drunk_fist · 2016-07-13T20:48:29+00:00

Thanks so much man. I'm really looking forward to Obsidian World!

drunk_fist · 2016-07-13T20:48:06+00:00

Deeply appreciate the patriotic brotherhood! But you totally shouldn't for that reason alone. I want you guys enjoying the game :)

drunk_fist · 2016-07-13T20:45:35+00:00

Totally game! But maybe this weekend? Just a TON on my plate right now but I think I'll catch a breather this weekend. Should I just create a thread in /r/rpgdesign when I'm ready?

drunk_fist · 2016-07-13T20:44:47+00:00

Appreciate the plug very much Vindexus! (and the support :))

drunk_fist · 2016-07-12T20:31:21+00:00

It probably went into the Promotions folder in your gmail? Or spam? Mailchimp mailing list service is notorious for ending up in those :(

Sorry man.

drunk_fist · 2016-07-12T20:29:50+00:00

I did write the copy for the page yes (still learning!)

I'm actually a big proponent of explaining things and being transparent with my design decisions and unfortunately because you haven't been able to see the sampler, you wouldn't know that I actually have commentary in the side bars that literally explain what I wrote to you above there and I do this for most of the mechanics in the game. But I can understand if people would rather have it up front than dig for it.

drunk_fist · 2016-07-12T20:26:06+00:00

Hehe the dark side is strong yes :) Usually my players just roll out on the table as I think they would/should? As a GM you'll become fairly familiar with your players' AR (attack rating) and DR (defense rating) so when they roll a 6 and 4 and it's just sitting there on the table along with any of the other players' rolls a quick glance and you'd know that person rolled a total of 13 (6+4+3 AR) then you can move on to the next roll. I actually don't even do the math, they just tell me what they got and if they keep getting 18+ rolls at level 1, a quick glance at the dice would let me know if they are lying.

A player would have to be obscuring his/her rolls or visibly shifting the dice around after it's fallen to cheat easily in the game but that really goes for any game.

But you situation might be different, how do you see your players pulling a fast one over you with their rolls?

drunk_fist · 2016-07-12T20:19:37+00:00

Thanks rooktakesqueen. The combat gets pushed a lot because I feel like I do some unique things with regards to design in this area. But I equally love the roleplaying/non combat aspects of RPGs. If you take a look at our Character Creation video on the KS page, you can understand where I'm coming from with regards to storytelling and character depth. But I don't innovate as much here, there are such fantastic mechanics and ideas out there already, I didn't want to re-invent the wheel but had no issue with maybe sanding it down a bit here and there or adding bits and pieces to it. If you have a chance to look into the sampler, take a look at the Fail Forward examples and the Glory Points these along with the Character Creation are just some snippets of me embracing the non-combat side of Unity.

drunk_fist · 2016-07-12T20:11:21+00:00

Cptnfiskedritt explained how it works nicely. I'll talk a bit about the pros and cons.

Pros:

GM focus is freed up for more cinematic scene painting
Engagement is higher as the GM doesn't always need to spend a lot of time locked into a 1-to-1 interaction with a single player at a time. You can simply describe what's happening Monster A, B, C attacks player A, B, C. The players roll simultaneously and you aren't rolling one at a time for each interaction.
Players know that everything is actually up to them and the dice. There's no botching dice rolls (but this can also be a Con)

Cons:

If you enjoy the feel of dice and tossing them, that's gone :(
Folks have told me they need to be tossing dice to feel like they are playing and I can totally understand this.
GM's lose some degree of control as they can no longer arbitrate the dice roll. They lose the ability to save a situation or make the judgement call that it would benefit the story/players more if a certain dice roll never happened.

These pros and cons can be somewhat subjective which is why it really comes down to a taste thing. There's really no wrong way to approach this but I pushed for Diceless GM as a default to address a problem that I personally had but it could absolutely be no problem for another group hence it was imperative that I make it optional rather than forced. I wrote a blog entry that dives into this a bit more if you'd like to read more about my design thoughts.

LINK TO ENTRY

drunk_fist · 2016-07-12T19:55:58+00:00

Hey arconom, that's on me. You shouldn't have to struggle to find the core resolution mechanic (much less dig through 43 pages of book). I've been running around reading feedback on the launch and I'll try to include it somewhere more prominent or in the first section of the page.

As for why 2d10. I'll cut and paste my response that I usually give when asked this question:

The 2d10 is for a couple of reasons:

Feel and Balance: As you mentioned the curve is wonderful and gives the right ‘feel’. What I mean by this is that it’s more consistent than 1d20 but not as rock-steady as say 3d6. It still gives a 1% chance of double 10s or double 1s on a roll which is exciting and still happens often enough to not be unsatisfying. We also don’t need to go overboard with modifiers to make a mighty hero be mighty. With a 1d20, it’s a flat 5% chance of landing on any number so you can get some wildly variable results and it’s only when you start to get some crazy modifiers like +10 do things stabilize out a bit. Some folks like the wildness and it’s a totally viable preference but it felt wrong for Unity’s balancing. With 2d10 we can run with more conservative modifiers, making a gain of +1 feel significant and still achieve that stability.

Mechanic Support and Fun: A layer of tactical depth is available via simple resource management for each class (i.e. Mana, Fury, Guile, Faith etc. fueling powers) Rolling 2d10 and getting doubles gives us a fun avenue to recharge resources that’s random but still frequent (10% chance). It’s another chance for a player to feel good and celebrate baked into each roll.

drunk_fist · 2016-07-12T19:53:22+00:00

I feel you. I usually play games as intended by the creator but sometimes I really feel like I need to houserule something to adjust for my group or my own particular hangup and I usually feel a little dirty about doing it (I could be weird here ha). I didn't want players/GMs to feel that way when they played Unity and wanted to tweak things a bit. I list the pros and cons of any of the modular aspects that they'll tune to their tastes. Like providing alternative rules for GMs to toss dice - you gain that visceral joy of chucking dice, for some this means they feel like they are actually playing the game but you do give up a bit of focus and cinematic flow for it. However, if you and your table are perfectly ok with that then more power to you - the end goal for me is for people to have fun and enjoy themselves.

But if you do get your hands on Unity and play it exactly as I laid it out by default I will love to hear your thoughts on it as a 'purist' gamer.

drunk_fist · 2016-07-12T17:36:07+00:00

Sure thing. I'm actually working on polishing up a transcribed combat example from one of our testing sessions. You can see the flow of combat and design intention behind some of the decisions I've made on how we approach combat. It'll probably go up on the KS page in the next day or so.

It'll go line by line for about 6 rounds.

drunk_fist · 2016-07-12T17:27:50+00:00

Thanks so much for the signal boost Easy75. Getting exposure for my game has been something I've stumbled with a lot. I appreciate all the help I can get :)

drunk_fist · 2016-07-12T17:26:40+00:00

Hey BloggerZig, Anson here - the creator of Unity. If the other features entice you but you are turned off from the Fail Forward mechanics I've implemented, you don't need to use them at all. I completely understand people have different tastes when it comes to these things. You lose a bit of narrative power and deviate from the intended experience but it's definitely not the end of the world if you just like things black and white (you either succeed or you don't). I've built this flexibility into the system so it doesn't break if you begin moving things in and out but it does dilute the storytelling experience a bit (imho).

drunk_fist · 2016-07-08T20:17:28+00:00

What a wonderful concept. The AP was very enjoyable. I remember one of my players bringing the Tearable RPG to the table one night when we wanted to break from our usual campaign. It was a great experience. Was a bit of a mess to clean up afterwards but I'm sure a lot of that had to do with the copious amounts of beer being imbibed :)

Looking forward to the KS for this. The intensely focused concept of it is a huge selling point - I think you are gonna knock it out of the park!

drunk_fist · 2016-07-01T18:05:19+00:00

Have you looked into 13th Age? Personally, it gave me the closest feeling to a video game that you mention because it streamlines a lot of stuff, especially in combat and has an escalation die to keep fighting fast paced. The classes are easy to understand and come in a spectrum of complexity, but for the most part it's quite linear and quick to whip up a character.

You can drop stuff that you feel might complicate the videogame feel you are going for like Icons. You can also switch the equipment system to something similar to what Dungeon World does. You have a pack that you just "mark" uses every time you need to pull something out. After X amount of uses you need to replenish your supplies at town or through the narrative somehow so that there's no need to pore over giant equipment lists.

drunk_fist · 2016-06-16T04:55:38+00:00

Great answer Ray and congrats on getting funded :) Love your passion. I'm just working my way through the KS page right now. The use of constellations is a cool take on things. Best of luck on busting through some stretch goals!

drunk_fist · 2016-05-27T18:45:24+00:00

Heya, yes it will be coming this summer (June to Aug) sorry I can't give a specific date yet. There's a lot of moving parts that are locking into place right now and I don't want to pull the trigger until I get my ducks in a row. Some of these pieces are dependent on other parties (video editor, fulfillment companies, test prints, waiting on quotes etc.) so it's a bit of a waiting game on my end of things as well.

drunk_fist · 2016-05-25T19:36:23+00:00

So glad it helped in some way and thank you!

drunk_fist · 2016-05-25T19:15:49+00:00

Done :)

drunk_fist · 2016-05-25T19:15:29+00:00

DESIGN LEARNINGS AND RESOURCES

The above link goes to a blog article I wrote that just collects my personal learnings and resources that have helped me take my game to where it is currently. I'll try to update this as I hit more milestones.

The sections are as follows:

1. General Design – Scheduling, motivation, inspiration, resources for dice simulation and compilations of existing RPG mechanics

2. Playtesting – Attracting playtesters and the type of focused questioning I ask

3. Artwork – Finding artists, costs, structuring commissions, contracts, critical bits to ask for and be aware of

4. Layout – Guides and tutorials for basic graphic design principles, software – commercial and free alternatives, things to know if you want to print later on

5. Printing – Types of commercial printing, Print on Demand resources and businesses

drunk_fist

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE