Lessons Learned #2: The Quickest Resolution

To my great disapointment, Hostargo seemed to drag a bit in my most recent play tests. It seemed like more of my players were having trouble with the main dice mechanic. I have normally chalked up any clunkiness to players being new, the inverse dice mechanic being very unfamiliar, and otherwise just player learning curve. This thought was backed by the fact that some people had no issue with it at all...

But after one of the playtesters, who I know to be an RPG designer himself, found the dice mechanic bumpy at best, I began to seriously question what was going on. His input was extremely helpful, because he was able to point directly to the problem:

In "simpler" mechanics, you have a static roll + variable mods compared to a variable target number. In my system, you have a variable roll + variable mods compared to a variable target number. There's an extra step for the players to keep track of in there that, while small, slows the resolution process just enough to take people out of the fiction and onto their physical character sheet.  Fuck.

So my brainwaves started rolling and one by one thought of at least one comment from previous playtests that pointed to the same thing. No one else has nailed it on the head though, so I was unable to really find a solution to their thoughts. But then I also thought back on the players that had no trouble at all with the system, and a realization hit me. All of those players didn't actually use the system as I had described!

Instead of taking the challenge rating (CR), adding it to their roll, and comparing it to their stat, they instead took the CR, subtracted it from their stat, and then tried to roll under the resulting number. This doesn't exactly take out the extra step described in the problem above, but what it does do is get to the resolution quicker. In the addition system I have used, it takes the player multiple views at their rolls and stats in order to keep everything in their head and finally come up with a result. Using this subtraction method, the numbers flow in an easier step-by-step basis, so that when you finally go to roll, you're down to just a simple comparison. This allows the players to immediately know their resolution result after rolling, which was the whole goal in the first place.

I was so focused on avoiding subtraction that I was deaf to the suggestions and comments of plenty of people that have suggested this before. For that, I'd like to apologize. Once I realized how much faster it is, I've even justified the subtraction in my mind: because higher CRs are bad, it actually feels better to be subtracting it as a bad thing than it does to be adding it to your skill roll.

When it comes right down to it, we've now got a two step process: determine TN, and roll under. In theory, this will be much faster than the previous mechanic and potentially even make more sense to the players. But as of this writing, this is all just theory, and must be put to the test.

I still have the three variables in my equation, but introducing that third variable was one of the whole points of my inverse dice system. It allows me to reduce variance as character skill increases. That flexibility is good for the long run of the game, so I don't think its going anywhere anytime soon. Instead, I'm focusing on making my unique mechanics as smooth and easy to use as possible.

Thank you to all of the great people who have helped me reach this conclusion!