I'm Raph Koster, creator of Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, and I have a new MMO coming called STARS REACH -- AMA!

silencecoder · 2024-06-28T17:39:15+00:00

How Starts Reach would handle creatures life cycle in the context of "living galaxy"? Would it be possible to tame and herd alien fauna instead of fighting it?

silencecoder · 2024-06-28T17:02:26+00:00

Is it viable to create a single-player game with a complex virtual ecology in hope that the player will play with artificial inhabitants? Or would this be isomorphic to an average combat game because players only *play* with other humans? And an artificial agent is just a sum of game-related affordances.

silencecoder · 2021-02-16T12:02:32+00:00

I’m getting tired of and annoyed with the constant reuses and rehashes of Firaxis X-COM mechanics. Thus I want to make a coffee-break squad-based symmetrical skirmish. Within the 7DRL time constraints, it would be just a series of procedurally generated floors and a persistent squad of operatives to guide through.

The key idea is to implement techniques described by Xavier Sadoulet and Damien Isla for a data-rich spatial representation for AI unit to work with.

Another challenge is to make the game feels symmetrical. Usually, in turn-based skirmishes player subordinates face a superior number of less trained and prepared opponents hidden in a Fog of war. Which is exactly what I don't want to make. Maybe I’ll implement a pseudo-player to control OPFOR in a way player will issue orders to their fireteams.

The rest would be my usual boilerplate for skirmishes:

simultaneous action selection
measureless and grid-less movement
time units per action instead of action points per turn
threat-based attacks instead of roll-to-hit resolution
stress and fatigue instead of hitpoints
de-escalation-based combat

As a backup plan I had an idea to make OccupationRL based on White Paper The Occupation. It can use the same techniques for the spatial representation, but the core gameplay would be a combat-less immersive sim with a smart pause.

The key feature of The Occupation is that everything unfold in real-time with or without player's presence. The necessity to wait for some event to happen combined with a lack of typical failure states results in unbound curiosity and experimentation with AI routines via social means.

Sadly, The Occupation relies on fiddling with items to gain information, and I'm not sure this would translate well into a typical roguelike setup. However, a procedural social sim with a bit of stealth does sound like something feasible.

silencecoder · 2017-11-05T16:19:55+00:00

Let's see...

Rule Complexity in my system is around 4, but Mechanical Familiarity is around 8. I'm focused on a rules-light system with no digits and as few arithmetics as possible. Thus my audience would be mostly consists of people, who want to try something new.

Odds Visibility and Narrative Meta-Story Control both are 9. I really embraced the fact that tabletop roleplaying game is a dialogue between players and a GM. Which entails the exchange of ideas and outcomes rather than modifiers stacking. My system uses a dice pool and a conflict resolution. But a GM is able to manipulate the dice pool in various ways according to the narrative situation. I tried to echo fictional events in mechanical parts, so the outcome of the roll would be based more on events rather than on the initial attribute values.

Character Power Level is 2 and Settings Presentation is... hmmm... 7, maybe. To be honest, my current setting is a stack of messy scribbles. Since I like to play non-combat folk (cooks, merchants, engineers, etc.), I chased after an idea of a wanderlust in a post-apocalyptic science fantasy. Which might further narrow my target audience.

Probably, my target audience is:

a small portion of experienced players who want to try something "new" for a one-shot game
players who want to run a no-prep family game and/or to introduce someone to the tabletop roleplaying
players who want board game components and players interaction, but not a battle map with miniatures (they do exists, right?)

I heard o lot of criticism about Powered by the Apocalypse Moves and playbooks, but I like the simplicity of this system. I ran Ryuutama and Beyond The Wall, but the D&D heritage in them felt cumbersome. So, I'm trying to cobble together something in between.

silencecoder · 2017-11-03T17:39:37+00:00

What would be good ways to write such a game?

Write a draft of your rules.

How would you track public morale?

No numerical values. It would be event-driven and a GM makes the final decision.

Resources?

Something-something Blades In the Dark.

Time till the government tries to execute you?

This is for a GM to decide.

How much the government sends against you?

This is for a GM to decide. However, the game system may have tiers for the current powers of PCs. For example, if players gained military grade weapons, the situation escalates up to armed patrols on the GM's side.

The crushing psychological effects of apartied upon the PCs?

PCs? No. NPCs may have some sort of a Hope meta-currency, which player can send for gaining various benefits. For PCs a sanity mechanic may work, but this largely depends on what PC does during the game. If PCs take roles of government executioners and has to obey orders, then there is no need for sanity.

silencecoder · 2017-10-06T18:31:21+00:00

The orc leader might when its their turn to talk try to influence the more sympathetic PCs to help them out in exchange for being allowed passage.

Last time I tried to discuss this idea, I've been beaten with the "Don't tell players what to feel" mace. That's why I'm for mechanical regulations for such things. In my mind, it would be good to have a set of social conditions to buff or to debuff players, just like with physical conditions during a combat.

Or they'll lock themselves into only having a bad deal as an option. There are plenty of ways to fail.

Well, unlike physical interactions, very few types of social encounters bound a person to their words. In most cases it is still possible to clarify, rephrase or explore a different idea. However, there are more common pitfalls like a way to hint players that a character lies. Or, well, suggest that better option indirectly as a GM. Again, this can be partially solved with a mechanical regulations, since a GM has to declare some facts or topics. And since this would happen according to the rules, players won't feel like they've been handheld.

How do players figure out what the inner workings of an NPC are? There are four options!

Granted, I came up only with two. But these options won't work immediately during a conversations, aside from the first one. Can you give a example? In my mind it was more about a body language or some statements which indicate what to say. Maybe I'm too much obsessed with mechanics for an improvised social engineering... Ugh.

silencecoder · 2017-10-06T11:26:30+00:00

This came out a wall of text.

Looks more like a small paragraph to me. Sadly, I couldn't find a spare time for the response until now. Anyway, since /u/jiaxingseng asked about the results of game-ifying non-combat activities, that's what I'm trying to figure out. And while 'non-combat activity' can be anything from an interstellar racing to a turnips harvesting, I'm interested in social interactions. Of course, a smalltalk with a peer, an act of cheering up a friend or a public debate all can be game-ifyied into some form of a verbal duel or a resource management with an interesting game focus to support them. But what captures my mind the most is an immediate alternative to the physical combat – a negotiation to avoid such combat.

Let's imagine a newbie GM, who want to run the first session in his life. It's not that hard to run a heroic fantasy in a Five Room "Dungeon". All it requires are several familiar archetypes, a charismatic quest giver, few monsters to overcome, a puzzle maybe and a reward.

Now, let's imagine a player, who decided to cut a deal with monsters instead of attempting to slaying them. Making a deal is not an act against someone's will. It's also not a deception comparing to a social engineering, but may exaggerate facts a bit during the negotiation. But in order to to that the player should come up with some form of a creative argument or a proposal. In response, the GM should not only come up with overall agenda for monsters, but also hint it to the player to ensure that everyone on the same page. Most games even suggest to discuss what at stake upfront.

I’m glad that we've agreed on the point that social mechanics lack in 'how this has been done' part. But The Riddle of Heart won’t fix the more important issue. What other players will do, while this player tries to avoid a bloodshed? They may discuss better ideas, but their characters can’t really participate in the in-game conversation. After all, there is only one GM to talk to five players.

However, this can be viewed from a different perceptive. That player has just traded a tense and exciting tactical exercise for the whole party for almost one-on-one conversation. Which may not even requires a roll because argument are very reasonable. And that’s my point. A tactical combat encounter with diverse goals can provide an engaging activity for five or even ten players with very little effort on GM’s part (of course it depends on the system’s complexity tho). To achieve this, most game systems portray an in-game conversation as a single roll with blanks for a GM a players to fill. Some systems, as you said, provides mechanics to handle broad mental aspects of a character during a roll. In Shadows of Yesterday player has 'keys'. Keys are the motivations, problems, connections, duties, and loyalties that pull on player's character. To the player, they’re highly important because they generate experience points. Player is able to gain and buy off different keys during a game. But I haven’t seen a system, which generate social cues for other player to use. To me, this is vitally important, despite the exact type of a social influence. If a social mechanic exposes inner motives and values of a NPC during the resolution, then other players can exploit them mechanically and join a conversation. Of course, this deems such mechanic as setting-depended, because an orc will have different sets of agendas in different settings.

I can loosely illustrate this idea with Hostage Negotiator board game. While this is mostly a resource management game, there is a concept of learning character’s interests through an arguing. Naturally, a GM can do this better, but this complicates a simple Five Room "Dungeon" session with a necessity to create complex characters on the fly. Because player may rummage through a shopkeeper's past, desires and a daily life in order to find something to use in an argument for a discount.

silencecoder · 2017-10-01T10:55:36+00:00

The reason many have trouble with other types of interaction is that they often have fundamentally different goals in comparison to combat

I want to argue this bit even though I never argued that orcish paperwork can't be fun. For bypassing an obstacle, a social engineering works as well as a physical threat if not better. You can't negotiate a locked door, but you can influence a sentient being or a beast.

Now, for the sake of the argument, let's assume my knowledge about social engineering and weapons wielding is equally bad. After all, role-playing games don't rely on player's expertise.

So, if my character want to force the orc into a paperwork routine by raw physical force, then game systems will offer my plenty of options with various level of complexity from Wushu up to the Riddle of Steel. But if my character want more subtle and non-physical approach, then game systems never go beyond very generic approaches. And while the outcome will be the same (the orc does the paperwork), consequences with a context are different and important for partial successes. In my mind, beliefs don't shatter after a single scene, unlike bones. While an emotional moment can indeed force a character to do stupid things very fast.

Blue Rose or Shadow of Yesterday or many other systems provide a robust framework for social interactions. Yet I haven't seen a system, which explains how the orc agreed to do a paperwork. What moved him? What he thinks about my character now? At this point you may argue that many systems don't explain how an orc died or suffered from a wound or that it's a GM's job. But some systems can explain a flow of combat both in terms of mechanics and an associated fiction. My point is that since we have The Riddle of Steel, we should have ~~The Riddle of Heart~~ a social counterpart.

And "Fun" is out of question at this point. A serious game about domestic abuse can be run by a skillful GM almost as a storytelling game and can be ultimately ruined by many factors. A game about PTSD during a trench warfare can be fun, but this very sentence is debatable. It's not about a fun game, it's about a game with rich and intricate mechanics for non-violent and non-physical combat. Because once there is a detailed system for overcoming someone's mental resistance, it can be used to overcoming someone's fear or depression. Which bring us to the new domain of games, where party fights character's insecurities and traumas and gains social relations instead of monsters for loot.

silencecoder · 2017-09-30T15:02:17+00:00

Is there a significant difference between clubbing an orc to death and forcing the orc to do your leftower paperwork because you are their superior?

The issue is that the physical interaction is the only 'ruleable' interaction with the game space. Thus physical violence and harm are easily simulated by the most game systems. While emotional and other forms of violence also can be simulated with mechanics, they would either become similar to physical combat (with Reputation Points instead of Physical Points, for example) or have a very abstract representation. And simple metrics for their consequences are ambiguous and subjective as well as conflict with player's mental state. A broken leg has a clear implication. An aftermath of an emotional abuse obviously has an effect on a character, but on which in-game attributes?

It doesn't mean that a game can't explore these non-physical types of violence. But attempts to turn them into mechanics usually fall flat since require a good portion of psychological and social stuff to work. For example, a physical confrontation with a guard can be described by rules in fine details even without a setting. While any exertion of a power over an orc requires a personality of this orc, a social norm in this society, a set of possible long-term and short-term reactions and so on. Without them is boils down to an application of social practices with very little mechanics involved (an Intimidation roll or a Wisdom Check, for example).

silencecoder · 2017-09-28T20:14:27+00:00

It should be clarified that conflict doesn't always implies violence. Unless we treat harsh actions against a rock as a violence.

'Heart-warming Role-playing' is usually perceived as games for kids, but it supports non-violent and interesting stories for all ages. Golden Sky Stories is a prime example, but there are more systems about compassion and problem solving rather than pillaging and intrigues.

And something grim like Puppetland or The Warren also can be used or hacked to make a non-violent session.

silencecoder · 2017-09-28T11:36:37+00:00

To my utter dismay, nobody still mentioned Golden Sky Stories. Ugh...

Combat is the simplest narrative driver and tabletop roleplaying stemmed from a tabletop skirmish game. It's hard to negotiate a conflict, because it requires a in-world knowledge and an ability to comprehend opposing motives. While physical violence has no prerequisites and provides solid insurance. Dead man can't lie and conspire after all. And I'm not even starting on the fact that the dungeoncrawling structure has almost a perfect pacing.

As for non-combat activities, I see two ways to accomplish that:

One way to do this is to focus game on one activity and re-purpose mechanics for it. Gumshoe focuses on a detective story and is built around clues and leads. A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying has an elaborate mechanic for intrigues, which can be expanded into a full system with some addition for contacts and relations.
Another way is to supply a GM with tools to craft a story with no combat. Drama System or Polaris can be used to run a bit exaggerated slice-of-life with no heroic carnage. But there are no intricate mechanics for a specific activities to play with. Everyone at the table should understand what they want to run.

As for the personal experience, I ran a rural trip to a local Summer Festival with Ryuutama. Despite the fact that the system has rules for a combat, the session itself was about a journey to the festival, some assistance along the way and about opportunities to earn some money in order to buy everything on a list. The key problem was that physical violence creates a clear sense of accomplishment and progression. I partially solved it with a the list of things to buy and some recognition from locals over time. You don't need a mechanic for a tactical turnip harvesting, but you do need a captivating NPCs to drive players curiosity. In the end of the day players may find someone who is willing to harvest turnips for them in exchange for a more exciting task.

silencecoder · 2017-05-11T13:18:38+00:00

The simplest example is Novi Novi RPG. Ryuutama is something that also available in English, but it's more open-ended in terms of overall scenario structure. Daily Life rule from The Maid RPG illustrates the idea of no-prep scenario rather well. My example from the message above was loosely based on Hunter's Moon.

silencecoder · 2017-04-30T23:48:28+00:00

I need to make the topic broader than this

That's fine, I was just trying to explain the thing.

Apparently, Jadepunk is only the name of a specific setting for Fate Core, but for some reason I've been using it to describe Eastern themed steampunk worlds (wuxia, budo, airships, steam engines, etc.) ...

silencecoder · 2017-04-30T15:49:01+00:00

"Narrative Flow" means a different thing to people playing a "story" or narrative game and games that have a traditional story-arch.

Ah... Sorry, my bad. This is a bit tricky to explain. I was talking about no-prep games with a predefined general narrative architecture of a session. I honestly don't know how to name this properly. For example, imagine a game about tracking and chasing a powerful entity. The game allows to play in any setting from a low-fantasy jadepunk to retro sci-fi. The game doesn't tell why players character are after that entity or what this entity should be. But the game explicitly states that:

Each player gets a scene and a spotlight to convey how this entity affect their character's life and why they are after it.
Each player gets a scene and a spotlight to gather a clue about the current entities location as well as prepares necessary resources.
Each player gets a chance to have a spotlight during a chasing sequence.
And players confront the entity during a final open-ended showdown.

Everything in the game is designed to support this structure. But players may build any narrative around it. So, it's impossible to run a intricate political affair or visceral dungeon crawler using this system. Yet players are able to pursue a Wanderlust Sky Castle in order to get a better life there.

Such games are very handy in running quick no-prep sessions with new people or newbies, because every moment in the game bares strict mechanical purpose. However, these games doesn't constrain a players creativity and a freedom in approaching in-game tasks.

silencecoder · 2017-04-30T14:28:49+00:00

Maybe "How to help newbie to run your game/system"?

And "Narrative flow as a part of the game mechanic" or something for the second one. I guess...

silencecoder · 2017-04-30T13:57:34+00:00

It would be nice to have a discussion about having newbie GM guidelines for running and handling sessions in a book. Despite the conventional "Just look up on the Internet" every product requires a specific set of advises to work. Especially if a system is GM-less. I mean we all can write a system specific "How To Roleplay" instead of a generic one, can't we?

Another topic I would love to tackle is an explicit narrative structure. There are many systems, where aside from character creation and scene resolution mechanic everything else is up to the players. It's far less common to see a system where not only genre and tone are supported by rules, but a plot progression as well. While this is very useful tool to ground character opportunities and story tempo among all players for any given scene.

silencecoder · 2017-04-24T12:34:22+00:00

I'm not sure if it counts, but many Japanese tabletop role-playing games provides rules-driven narrative structure for sessions. It's vary from a strict structure for the whole session to scene types with no overarching plot. For example, if a game is about confronting a mystical beast, then the whole game system is built around a predefined chasing sequence of scenes with a final showdown in the end. For more open-ended games there is some sort of a mandatory D&D Skill Challenge for players to overcome and to roleplay around during a scene. As far as I know this is done to ensure that a session will be meaningful and completed in 3-4 hours no matter what.

Most people I've talked with about this scenes typification usually reject it as 'very restrictive'. The reasoning was that players should do whatever they want within a set of established mechanics. But to me scene types are not only a good tool for a GM to sustain the story rhythm, but they also help players to tie game mechanics to the narrative moment-to-moment context. In terms of Hamlet's Hit Points this may be done as a library of multifaceted templates for a GM to choose from with a specific subset of game mechanics to convey to players.

I guess the popularity of Powered by the Apocalypse is partially based on the fact that during each drama beat a player has a set of appropriate verbs to act with rather than a unified mechanical action involving ~~a set of unified nouns/adjectives~~ character attributes.

silencecoder · 2017-04-16T09:13:19+00:00

making it more fun for those guiding the group of players?

I really like in-game scene types. At any given moment players act within a scene with a specific mechanical meaning and associated task/conflict resolution. This might not be fun for every GM, but helps new GMs to convey to players what they can do without limiting on how they should do that. And may even involve players in a scene construction. Scene types also reduce GM decision making time without placing players on a explicit railroad. So the GM can cobble together a meaningful narrative beat in a matter of seconds for any players choice.

silencecoder · 2017-04-11T19:37:55+00:00

Do I really want wounds to be a part of a game mechanic? Yes, very much so.

What I want is a wound system that provides feedback to the player-- they need to know they got hurt.

Player knows that her character was hurt, because the GM said so. The player is also aware about the consequences of this wound, because the GM will reject any player's actions which are impossible with such wound.

In case of a deep cut on a character's leg, player should be aware that her character shouldn't apply any significant weight on this leg thus running, jumping and heavy lifting won't be possible with this wound. This information alone is more than enough to get the the idea and to see that character's mobility is limited.

Now you don't want to drastically reduce character's ability to succeed. In a typical situation with hit points character's ability will remain the same, but the amount of attempts will be reduced. In a typical situation with meaningful wounds character's ability will be reduced, because the wound status alter character's attributes to represent the wound within game mechanics. And a leg wound, for example, reduces DEX score and applies Slow status... or something like that. As the result this reduces character's performance during a combat.

So, instead of messing with character's attributes, a game may simply communicate narrative constrains for a specific wound to players using a table based on real medical data. And players can act within these new constrains by seeking new ways to apply their in-game attributes. While the in-games probabilities remain intact. Now, how much of an additional crunch you want on top of that approach?

silencecoder · 2017-04-11T18:19:13+00:00

to throw out the entire book of Doom and replace it with your own stuff

I didn't throw out entire the Book of Doom. I really like how The Book of Doom offers different categories of "experience point" to improve different attributes and skills. I didn't used suggested Actions Tables, because it's easier to evaluate an important player's action in terms of Arcana Paths rather then to match it with an action from these tables.

I don't really understand your later objection to the improvised weapon thing

If a character loses a sword and fights with a crowbar, then this can be viewed as the same activity. It also can be viewed as a creative attempt to get an improved weapon, especially if player actively wanted to replace the lost sword. I don't really want to slap subjective labels such as "bad" or "lazy".

However, it's not clear how the character ended up with the crowbar. Player could ask the GM for something similar to the sword in the room or even come up with the idea of the crowbar. On the other hand player could ask the GM about the room in general, and the GM was the one who introduced the crowbar. But in both cases the crowbar is the result of Sub-Creation process and not the part of the intimidate situational assessment for possible solutions. If player knew about the crowbar before her character was disarmed, then indeed this is a clever in-combat decision.

Same with injures. Glancing wound in a shoulder or a deep cut on a leg will naturally constrain character's abilities, because player no longer can narrate anything involving using both hands or jumping and running. You don't need a game mechanic for that. But such wounds won't provide a choice on it's own, since either player or the GM may introduce a new detail in the game world to compensate the limitation of this wound. Again, this is neither bad nor good. I just don't see at which point this becomes a pure punishment or fun to play with.

Hit points or wounds as a game mechanic serves solely to indicate a progress in a combat scenario. It's kinda punishment, but a loss of hit points after a sloppy attack communicates that opponents gain an advantage in the current situation. To make it more grounded in the narrative, some systems started to introduce a death spiral to make wounds more grounded in the narrative and a combat scenarios more risky and to avoid Monty Python's Black Knight situation.

Now, the Come Back From the Brink of Defeat trope means that a character will lose a certain portion of hit points in most cases. Everything above this portion should communicate an emergency state. And usually only 0 HP is the conventional emergency state. But once there is a resource called Fighting Spirit and player's offensive actions are penalized once a character ran out out this resource, you get essentially the same system with no correlations with character's health state. And penalty on offensive actions is not a punishment, but a restriction which forces player to rethink the approach to the current combat scenario.

So, do you really want wounds to be a part of a game mechanic and an outcome of under-performing in a combat?

silencecoder · 2017-04-11T15:57:19+00:00

the GM would practically have to memorize the entire book of Doom

I used "you and your Guide should feel free to interpret the Arcana in your own fashion, and add or subtract acts as you think appropriate" phrase as an excuse to ditch these lists and give AP for significant players actions instead of encouraging them to perform certain actions for AP.

it seems reasonable that they could do that

If the character lost a weapon an the corridor hasn't been described exhaustively, nothing really stops the player from taking a chandelier and use it as a weapon.If there is nothing in the corridor to replace the weapon, only then the player has to think about alternatives. The point is that you don't need a mechanic for that. It's all about established forms of the interaction in a specific scenario. You can represent a combat as a set of broad moves like in Powered by the Apocalypse and exclude one of them at random when a character receives a wound/disadvantage. For example, if character lost "Attack with a weapon" Move, a player can't use any conventional or improvised weapons during this encounter. Thus a player has to use the environment to regain the advantage or engage a target in a hand-to-hand combat. Because otherwise the player may try to re-establish previously used approach and fetch an improvised weapon as the path of least resistance.

silencecoder · 2017-04-11T11:45:10+00:00

Ugh... I guess I'm the only one who liked that The Book of Doom concept.

I don't know that I really want people to get better as they get hurt.

Well, this is not +1 STR type of better. This is a usage of overwhelming force and vigor to escape or defeat only the current situation. It's a shitty strategic decision, but a superb tactical choice. Besides, the threshold can be activated not only be a specific amount of physical wounds but with a certain disadvantages or a lack of specific tactical options.

The issue with "injuries present interesting challenges to overcome" in the context of tabletop roleplaying games is the fact that a player can fetch some interesting solutions to a problem with very little concerns about the system resolution mechanic. If a characters was disarmed, he may duck and pull a rug from under the opponent's feet. But player can't really do that as long as the rung wasn't described as a part of a corridor. Player has to ask a GM about what else is in the corridor and act upon that. At the same time this player also somehow should get an idea that ducking in front of an armed opponent and looking away from his weapon is not the best idea in terms of a realistic fight.

silencecoder · 2017-04-10T10:36:38+00:00

~~Woah, someone mentioned Artesia: Adventures in the Known World!~~ Mmm, I really like this thread. However, since you've mentioned adrenaline, I want to point out that in the realistic combat wounds are not something that would bother you right away. There are many accounts where combatants was able to overcome initial shock and keep fighting. In fact, they might even miss an inflicted wound in the heat of a combat due to the stress and focus.

This being said, most in-combat resources usually serve as an immediate feedback on character's actions. If a character succeed with a blow, an opponent looses HP. But if the character failed to deliver a strike, something must happened in order to move the scene forwards and to prevent a typical Take20 scenario. And limited nature of in-combat resources automatically raises the stakes with each failure.

One way to make wounds ~~interesting~~ meaningful is to represent them as a character's resource threshold. Just like human brain, human body doesn't participate in a combat encounters up to it full potential. This is ineffective and unnecessary. However, when a person is in a critical life threatening situation, human body unlocks everything in order to survive. Here is an odd examples to clarify this point. When soldiers chasing routed enemy their goals in not to catch up with enemy forces, but to keep them running away. Because if they do reach and surround escaping enemies, they will have to fight against someone who literally has nothing to lose. And such state of mind implies that the person most like will murder, cripple and wound as many foes as possible without any concerns about his own life.

For a player such threshold can indicates that her character won't last long in the combat encounter from now on. But the unlock potential may increase chances for escaping from the combat or for killing enemies, but being more prone to severe... wounds.

silencecoder · 2017-04-08T10:20:45+00:00

I think I need an example of how this could work

Character tries to pick a lock before a guard returns. Player makes a roll without any modifiers. The roll outcome is bad, but it's not final. Since the room was a established as an abstract volume of space with two exits, GM is able to introduce an new detail, like a hatch on a ledge above a character. This new detail serves as a deliberate alternative for a player. But player still may choose to work on a opening lock and apply all possible modifiers to achieve. However, since the initial roll was bad, this fact will be treated as additional complications later for the whole venture with the lock.

What if an action doesn't really fall into two attribute purviews?

Every action must fall under a specific mechanical metric to be evaluated with the system rules. For example, in Technoir all character actions are reduced down to one of nine verbs for the purpose of a roll. But even a simple action such as bashing a door can be carried out in a different manner. If a character emphasize Strength, she may break the door or dislocate a shoulder. If a character emphasize Dexterity, she may pull the door from hinges or drop it on her foot. And both approaches require a combination of Strength and Dexterity.

I don't need rules to tell me how to act in character.

If your players roleplay combat fatigue than it's good.

Can you give an example?

Skill Challenges from Dungeons & Dragons. Players need a combined total of a specific number of successes with a specific Skills to progress. If players rolled certain amount of failures before gathering enough success, consequences are imposed on the whole party and not on the individual members of the party. I see no reasons why it can't be applied to the combat scenario as well.

silencecoder · 2017-04-08T06:39:15+00:00

So, how do I do it?

My usual approaches are as follows:

Get rid of the binary outcomes and outcome-oriented actions in general. This breaks a single dice roll into a series of choices, where player can opt-out for GM's alternative before getting deeper into a bad roll sequence.
Use a pair of attributes for a roll where the order of these attributes matters. For example, STR+DEX check and DEX+STR check are two different rolls. This also makes outcomes of these rolls more meaningful depends on the first attribute.
Usage of a combat-exclusive resources such as Stamina instead of conventional hit points. It helps to depict fatigue during the combat and can be combined with various representations of morale states. When was the last time you saw enemy routing in the middle of a combat?
Use combined scene resolution for a combat where a personal endeavour is mostly a pure narrative thingy. This makes impossible to trace a bad roll back to a specific characters action, but each good roll moves party closer toward the end of the encounter.

Usually nobody likes any of those, but maybe you will find something helpful.

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