The 3 Axes of Outcomes

Every roll in a tabletop RPG should be interesting. A swing-and-a-miss just doesn't cut it anymore. We have more mature systems, like the new FF Genesys, that show us how a variety of possible outcomes, and a system for sub-goal effects, can make every character action propel the game forward.

Systems like Powered-by-the-Apocalypse are successful examples of how failing forward can keep a game progressing while constantly introducing new challenges for the players to face. But some players quickly grow tired of the average 7-10 roll always being the result (generally over half the rolls in any given game!). That's why in Genesys, they have 6 total possible outcomes, without leaving all of the dice interpretation to the players like in FATE or Mistborn. 

Success or failure on the action roll is important: do the characters accomplish their goal? Critical hits and misses, like in D&D, add two additional, time-tested exciting outcomes. In Genesys, there are also minor advantages and minor threats, for a total of six. What's more, each result is only mutually exclusive with it's counterpart (and not even true for criticals in Genesys!), giving us a satisfying variety of results: success with minor threat, failure with a critical advantage, or even success with both a critical effect and a critical threat!

This mix of results seems to be both the minimum required variety for keeping us entertained, but also the maximum amount of complexity we can still enjoy. I am currently reworking into Hostargo a mechanic I dropped some time ago. I'm dubbing this the "chaos die" that will be included in every roll, and there will be other mechanics to support and change this die, making it a properly integrated system rather than a stapled on rule.

Designing Around Meta Rolling

Reward cycles are difficult. For long-term character progression, I've got a decent idea on how to avoid min/maxing madness. But for the short, in-game cycle, I'm still struggling to find a balance. My current problem is dealing with players who meta-game their weaknesses to gain the short-term reward of "luck".

Characters each have a quirk, which is the lowest skill they have, and at any time the player can choose to roll this quirk (if appropriate in the fiction) instead of another skill in attempting to accomplish a task. If they do, they get one luck! This is a lot like FATE's compel system.

Let's say my character has a phobia of water. What's stopping me from finding a fast moving stream and jumping across it a bunch of times? It's a silly example, but it's a simple one. You can argue this isn't a good quirk, but I think ultimately most end up like this; phobias are easier to exploit.

So maybe the GM should only reward the luck if the action is meaningful. Okay, but now I have to worry about and arbitrate what meaningful means. That grey area causes disagreements; the GM feels like a rules lawyer and the player feels robbed. How about if meaningful is defined as including some sort of danger or consequences for failure? Sure - but what defines how severe the consequences are? I might fall in the river and get swept away, but what if my friends are right there to pull me out?

So maybe we shouldn't let the players dictate their use of the quirk. FATE has other players (including the GM) compel character aspects in order to make things interesting. This works I think in theory, but in practice, the GM has too many other things to worry about and everyone else is too wrapped up in their own aspects to think about other characters. It ends up with the same type of meta-gaming problems, where players will only think about trading compels once there's a couple of them low on FATE points.

I actually started with a system more akin to Numenera or Savage Worlds, where the GM dictates the luck economy by handing it out when a plot twist or other challenge is presented to the characters. Once again though, this is another thing the GM has to worry about, and balancing player meta-resource levels is generally low on my list of thoughts while at the table. In addition, I really want to the players to have control over when their weaknesses come into play, not only because they're the one constantly looking at their character sheets, but because I want to encourage those quirks to come out "naturally" in the fiction. I actually don't mind - and even encourage - a player actively looking for ways to use their quirk... so long as it's meaningful.

I hope you can see now why I'm spinning my wheels. On one hand, I want to hammer this down so that players who lean towards meta-gaming will have trouble doing so. On the other, I don't want to stifle creative players from role playing their quirks in an interesting way. The only solution I've come up with so far is to limit the maximum amount of luck a player can have at any given time, so that even if the group tends to meta-game as much as possible, the game balance won't be thrown too far out of whack.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, I'd love to hear them! Thanks!

The Problem with Varied Player Reset Times

Using your character's powerful spells now may solve your current problem, but what future challenges will you then be missing that magic for? Resource management can be an engaging part of an RPG, but an imbalance of when players get those resources back can cause a divide in the group's planning.

When one player argues he needs to sleep, another rolls her eyes and kicks down the door anyway. This conversation is rarely a fulfilling role playing experience, and the break in game flow is felt by everyone at the table. It is often up to the already-overwhelmed GM to inject danger or offer time-appropriate respite in order to mediate the group's recovery frequency.

Even if the game seems to be moving at the desired pace, a player may be feeling under powered and underwhelmed. If the all-powerful wizard forces the party to find sleep after every fight, the quick-recovery fighter rarely gets to shine. Likewise, if the wizard holds back because he never knows when the "right time" is to use his cool abilities are, he may eventually come to resent the fighter's every-encounter specials.

Having resource-recovery checkpoints vary between players puts an unnecessary pressure on the GM to keep the game running smoothly. There are multiple solutions that make this type of game work, but the simplest is often best: just avoid it completely.

Priority Scheduling: Big Buckets

When you actively seek out to do the dishes instead of sitting down to work on your game, you know you've lost a little bit of something. But that something isn't necessarily drive or dedication. Instead, you might just be suffering from a lack of prioritization.

Despite working in an agile software environment, using (and loving) great tools like Trello, and generally considering myself a well organized person, I found myself not sure what to do next on Hostargo, even though I know of hundreds of tasks that could be done. This uncertainty lead to demotivation, and in the end I've been subconsciously avoiding my creation. Then I watched a great Ted Ed video on how we can learn from operating system scheduling (I highly recommend you watch it! It's only 5 minutes!). It's one of those concepts that seems almost common sense once you think about it, but until you have thought about it, you don't actually implement in any fashion.

The basic premise is that instead of having a giant list of todos, and always picking the highest priority one to work on, instead start by giving each task a generalized priority of just a few buckets of importance. In a simplistic agile world, we put tasks into one of three buckets: "must haves", "should haves", or "nice to haves". Applying this approach to game design I think hits two birds with one stone. First, you start by working on only the core of your game. If you prioritized correctly, no fluff or extra "goodies" should be in your game when you've moved onto your "should haves". This keeps the design simple and forces you to question each additional piece of work you're adding in, rather than trying to rip it out later. Secondly, this methodology prevents you from getting sidetracked or even lost in a sea of TODOs. This keeps you focused on making progress on the things that matter most.

Later in the process, say four years into a project, you probably need to reorganize and relabel your buckets. I actually used to have buckets that were roughly "mechanics", "characters", and "world building". But I failed to assign priority to those buckets, and when it came to crunch time (e.g. a convention is coming up and 'oh shit' I need a fully playable game), I was always in a rush. Recently, I've been splitting up my "book" document into submodule documents, picking only the highest priority documents to work on, and getting those as done as much as I can before moving on. This has kept my scope of work small enough to tackle but broad enough to be flexible.

Over the holidays I've pumped out a new version of my pre-generated characters, made critical tweaks to my rune and weapon systems, and even reworked my list of quirks, which has been long overdue; all because I scheduled these tasks in the now ulta-important category of "character creation". My goal is to get an actual weekly game going sometime soon, and this is the first step of that goal.

Prioritizing in big buckets has helped keep me motivated on what's important. While it may or may not apply to all of life's scheduling challenges, it certainly helps in game design. Just don't spend so much time prioritizing that you never get anything done!