Discussion D&D style anyone?

[Soundwave]

More of an interest check if anything, but I had been kind of juggling the idea of low/high-stakes DM'd threads/missions that can be performed by a small-ish group of writers and just testing a system I think would be fun for such cases; low stakes as in characters involved are not in any direct danger of dying (Unless you are feeling really adventurous and letting fate decide for you). I also want to preface this that if you or someone you may know might be interested in adopting this "system" you are more than welcome to for your own factions/missions/etc. you can use it as a framework and modify it to your liking. This is mostly just a for fun/shits n giggles type idea for people who aren't particularly pressed on whether their character succeeds or fails.

I had been thinking of making use of the dice system to perform pseudo D&D lite missions that small groups can perform, using a relatively simple system. Introduce a little chaos and RNG into your writing.

The Basics

• Actions
  • Every action performed is done with a d20, for simplicity's sake, you either succeed or fail every time you roll, it's more or less a coinflip. Odd rolls are considered fails on the action performed while Even rolls are considered successful actions. You make a post, if an action(s) is included, then you roll in the initial post and the roll would determine the outcome of your next post, and essentially the next post you make just details how you either failed or succeeded.
    • Character A starts a post and says they're going to slice a panel.
      • Rolls Odd - Character A's next post details how their attempt failed. They can continue said post by trying again, in which case roll and see if you succeed/fail. Rinse and repeat as many times as desired.
      • Rolls Even - Character A's next post details how their attempt succeeded. You can now continue your post by starting another action, in which case, roll again within that post to determine next post's outcome or go into a neutral state and not roll.
  • Optionally, you can scale your failure/success outcome based off the value of the roll ie Rolling a 2 you can detail how you were just barely able to succeed whereas an 18 you succeeded effortlessly. Up to you, mostly just a flavor thing. We're not all perfect at what we do, we may barely get it done, who knows.
• BIG Naturals
  • Nat 1's and Nat 20's follow the usual ruling of something either catastrophic or amazing happening, really it's up to you on how that outcome is written.
    • Ideally, the Nat rolls are reflective of the situation. Using the example above, any further attempts to slice are rendered impossible on a Nat 1 while rolling a Nat 20 may give you complete access to a system, or getting one of your limbs entirely disabled in an injury (Nat1) or how you manage to bounce a shot off of 3 different surfaces to nail a collateral headshot (Nat20) in a combat scenario. Again, completely up to you how you write it out, but make it feel like it measures up to the roll.

Still Figuring Out

• Expertise
  • Probably the most experimental aspect that I had been considering. Obviously, there are some things your character is good at so there should be some ways to ensure you're not failing all the time at something you're good at and giving you a chance to reroll a failed action. A second chance if you will to force Fate's hand. We'll call these second chances Expertise Rolls to make it easier to read/understand as a mechanic.
  • Expertise is going to be based on generic roles, such as Tech, Combat, Medicine, etc. This can be however broad/specific you want it to be, but I think for specific situations it's better to be a little more on the nose. So if you're a doctor or a medic, your Expertise Rolls would be used for actions involving anything medicinal/surgical, etc.
    • Still trying to figure out whether I want Expertise to just be a generic catch all for rerolling any failed roll or if it is going to be specifically only for rerolling a particular action, ie Your Expertise is in Combat, so you can only use Expertise Rolls for actions involving combat.
    • Also trying to decide if I do go with the thought of having Expertise divided into roles, how many roles can be had which would probably impact how many Expertise Rolls you'd get for each roll. ie Your Expertise is in Tech/Combat therefore you can divide your Expertise between those two and have one hold more rerolls than the other or it all just gets put into one pool without worrying about roles.
  • Haven't quite nailed down how I would want this system to work but here are a couple ideas.
    • Give a flat/modest amount of Expertise Rolls to everyone.
    • Give individuals a specific amount of Expertise Rolls based on their character's overall experience level ie An Apprentice gets X, a Knight gets Y, a Master gets Z, etc.
    • Each individual rolls a 1dX at the start of the thread to determine how many Expertise Rolls you get to use for the duration of the thread.
    • Small starting pool of Expertise Rolls + Gain a free Expertise Roll every time you roll an 18, two if you roll a 20.

Anyways, I think that's enough word vomit. I'll open up the floor to you all for thoughts, suggestions, ideas. Love it? Hate it? Would it be something that you'd be interested enough to participate in? Gimme your input or take a crack at it yourself. If it is something that interests enough people, I'll work on refining an 'official' ruleset and perhaps open up a sign-up thread.

 

[Connel Vanagor]

Used to play this way for a long time. It's great!

 

[Rayia Si]

I think this could be interesting. Excited to know more.

 

[Karl Von Strauss]

Something I’ve used in my dnd campaigns is “Rolling with Risk” roll 2d20 and pick the number farthest away from 10. Higher (greater than or equal to 10) is considered a success while lower (9 and below) is considered failure or an inability to complete whatever the roll was for. And crit successes are the same higher number (12, 12) and crit fails are the same lower number (5, 5).

 

[Viari Banu]

Personally, I would suggest the FATE system above DnD. It's highly flexible and your characters aren't restrained by gacha's that could occur in a DnD system and lends itself very well to online forums because it is a descriptive system, not a mechanical one.

Everyone has a dice pool of 4.

Characters are described by their High Concept, Trouble, Aspects, Skills and Stunts. Your high aspect is, in a few short words, a defining description of a character. Trouble is a flaw or something that the GM or Player can use during regular play (your actively rewarded for using this). Aspects describe the characters history, personality, flaws, and strengths. Stunts describe special talents that might apply to certain situations. Finally, Skills are literally just that but must build a pyramid.

Finally FATE Points, which is a resource players earn by good RP or the GM invoking a characters Trouble. The Character in question can agree to this, or refuse. If they accept they earn a FATE Point, if they refuse there is no punishment.

Taking Xitli for example,

High Concept: Avali out of Water
Trouble: Rivals of Citalee
Aspects: Heir to a Throne, Kinslayer, Friend of the Slaves
Stunts: Raised in a Museum, Glamour, and Force in Denial
Skills: Appraisal (+5), Acrobatics (+4), Perception (+4), Martial (+3), Force of the Small (+3), Lore (+3), Law (+2), Mercantile (+2), Insight (+2), Politics (+2), Medicine (+1), Baking (+1), Flight (+1), Piloting (+1), Engineering (+1)

You have 5 Physical Stress and 5 Mental Stress, armour provides a defence value to these. Beskar might give you a +3 Defence to physical stress, but +0 to mental. Reaching maximum stress doesn't necessarily kill the character, again this is up to the parties involved, most of the time something happens that takes them out of the scene. For example, if you failed to persuade a police officer and lost the encounter because you hit 5 mental stress you are arrested.

In addition, NPCs and Scenes have Aspects that can be invoked by the Players or GM. Taking a recent example, created by Liin Terallo .

She was trying to recover the core of a reactor, the reactor was going into melt down that was creating anomalies.

So the scene might have the following Aspects; Force Anomalies, Ebbing Mine, and Reactor Meltdown.

At one point, we had almost reached the reactor which tried to defend itself by invoking illusions. In a FATE scenario it was essentially this;

Liin Terallo (GM) invoked Xitli's trouble, and I accepted.

Xitli would roll against the DC set by the DM to determine the result. The DM would have a +2 Advantage due to the trouble, so let's say it's a high challenge and the DC is 6.

So my response could be;

A trick, deceit. Xitli's focuses his internal energies to ward off the assault of his senses, utilising his glamour and abilities to shield himself.

As a result, he sees and interacts with a broken and distressed Avali who he imagines to be his brother (who he is accused of killing). This stuns him, and as a consequence, he fails to retrieve the core for himself.

I have a Force of the Small skill of 3, invoking my glamour stunt for a +2, and roll 4d6.

I roll 2, 1, 4, 6

That's 2 Failures, 1 Neutral, and 1 Success.

The DM has told me the target is 6, so Xitli fails and succumbs. How he succumbs is up to me, the player, so I still have full agency. My character will suffer some 'mental' damage but what actually happens is in this context is up to me.

Equally, other players can support other characters, so if your playing a intelligent character who doesn't have much combat expertise, they might use their skills to instead create new Aspects on opposing characters or a scene. Much like above, the DM sets a DC and the player rolls whatever they think is most relevant for the scenario, so long as they clearly describe how they are using their stunts or skills it's fine. These are temporary can be used by other players to gain bonuses. This basically makes any non-combat characters remain relevant in combat encounters, and similiarly combat characters can contribute to social encounters.

Another example, Viari is fighting some droids but he isn't very good in battle. So instead, he uses his excellent perception and a stunt called Bird's Eye View to create a temporary aspect on the Droids by calling out a weak spot in it's armour. His friend, uses that aspect to give themselves a +2 Bonus, once redeemed the aspect on the Droid is lost.

Edit: Improved grammer, posting on mobile is a mistake.

 

[Name Haver]

Soundwave Adding dice mechanics to play-by-post RPing is cool and there are lots of systems you can use. I'm in favor of it as it adds some actual stakes to the roleplay other than two writers simply collaborating on a story. That being said, here's my thoughts on your idea:

Character death or at least severe consequences should be on the table. Otherwise there are no stakes and you're kinda gimping your idea from the start. If nothing is at stake, then there is really no point in introducing dice in the first place.

You need to have some kind of skill system that characters can be proficient in. Simply having dice be a completely random deciding factor of when characters succeed or fail at something is not fun.

You also want to think about when players should actually roll dice.

Using your above example, Character A rolls to slice a panel and fails. They can then try again and roll... but why? If they can make attempts ad infinitum until they succeed, then what is the point of the roll? You're just gamifying exercises in tedium at that point.

Instead, there should be three factors that go into a roll.

1. Roll only when the outcome is uncertain. If the action obviously works, or obviously fails, don't roll.

2. Roll only if failure would be interesting. If failure means "nothing happens try again", don't roll. If failure doesn't change the situation then you aren't creating drama, you're creating skill check spam. Instead, make failure cost time or resources. Which brings me to point 3:

3. Roll only when time pressure matters. If time doesn't matter, then rolls don't matter.

So, reframing your example of Character A trying to slice a panel, make failure matter. Time passes, there's a wandering patrol threat, etc. There are now consequences for the characters to face.

You should think of dice more as a resolution tool, not a content creator. You use dice to create a world for your players to interact with, rather than something that just happens because your rules say so. Otherwise you're going to get bogged down in the tedium of your players constantly asking "what do I roll for x", the game grinds to a halt and nobody is having fun.

It may seem like I just dogged on your idea, but I think you should go for it. Introduce actual stakes to roleplaying. Maybe Character A actually can die because they did something stupid, rather than being invincible unless their writer allows them to die.

Watch how people instantly change how they roleplay their characters.