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Aduu Avagnar · **10-06-2014, 08:38 AM**

the latter is actually a non-issue however, as even if you are a Master of Magick[sup]tm[/sup] your magic could fail you, a slight distraction could halt your cast, they could reach you before your cast goes off. there are any number of reasons as to why the other /could/ feasibly win, and i actually find it more beneficial when I lose a roll, as I can explore those options. and whilst the probability of someone with 5 rolling that many 1's and someone with 1 rolling a 6, so is the probability that they would pull it off, if that makes sense?

Knight Kat · **10-06-2014, 09:58 AM**

I like the idea of character sheets, and this one looked nice simple until it got to the second and third part. It seems like I may be the only one confused by a few things.

Firstly, what are artifact fragments? That is not explained, so it makes the whole energy and Sanity part have no context that I can see.

Secondly, in combat when you choose one attribute for your attacks, is that the attribute you use for every attack during the whole plot? Or just that fight? Or just that attack in that one fight? In other words, can you use different attributes for different attacks during a single battle?

And when it comes to rolling; the example was if you use Fortitude as your attack attribute, and you have 4 points in Fortitude then you would roll 1d20 four times, but don't do 4d20 because that would add them all up. However, if you do not add up the numbers of the four rolls, how do you use the rolls? If you do add up the numbers of the four rolls, why does it say not to let rolls.org do it automatically with a 4d20?

I feel like I'm missing something, and it could be that I should just avoid trying to evaluate character sheet systems this early in the morning XD

L'lani Tyata · **10-06-2014, 12:09 PM**

(10-06-2014, 08:38 AM)Nakoli Chalahko Wrote: the latter is actually a non-issue however, as even if you are a Master of Magick[sup]tm[/sup] your magic could fail you, a slight distraction could halt your cast, they could reach you before your cast goes off. there are any number of reasons as to why the other /could/ feasibly win, and i actually find it more beneficial when I lose a roll, as I can explore those options. and whilst the probability of someone with 5 rolling that many 1's and someone with 1 rolling a 6, so is the probability that they would pull it off, if that makes sense?

Makes sense to me. Also happen to agree with it. =)

Myxie Tryxle · **10-06-2014, 01:08 PM**

One system I found very useful for confronting these sorts of conflicts is Dogs in the Vineyard. In that system, you can make balanced characters with very different capabilities. All the attributes a character has must be very descriptive and have a unique flavor.

For example, let's consider the barmaid and warrior mentioned earlier. When it comes to combat, the barmaid may have the trait "Been in a few bar brawls 2d6." The warrior could have the trait "Battle-hardened 2d10."

If they came to blows in the bar, the barmaid may be able to hold her own. If the barmaid additionally had a relationship of "Ferdy's Bar 1d10," her knowledge of the location and some assistance from one of the regulars would give her a fighting chance.

If instead they met in a dark alley, on a battlefield, or somewhere else, the warrior's superior combat experience, plus his "Family Sword 2d6" would likely see him prevail.

To give you an idea what an entire character looks like, here's Myxie's character sheet:

Quote:Myxie Tryxle â€“ Dogs in the Vineyard Character Sheet

Background: Strong History

Acuity: 3
Body: 3
Heart: 4
Will: 3

Traits:
Magically Talented: 2d8
Well Read: 2d8
Clever Improvisation: 2d10
Craftsmanship: 3d6

Relationships: (Reserve 1d4, 3d6)
Grendar Trikhel: 1d6
Grendarâ€™a Trikhel: 1d6
Uncle Oriâ€™to: 1d6
Farawynn: 1d8
Headstrong: 1d8

Belongings:
Arcanistâ€™s Arm 2d6
Book Collection 1d6

Throw Myxie into such a combat against a warrior, and her only useful traits would likely be magically talented and arcanist's arm, unless some aspect of the scene allowed her to devise a clever trap or mechanism to make use of the environment for "Clever Improvisation." Her "Well Read" and "Craftsmanship" traits would likely never help her in a combat situation, but could be quite useful in a social conflict or knowledge based skill challenge.

In addition, there are four different severities of conflict, and each one makes use of different base stats, so if your character isn't winning the shouting match, you can raise the stakes to fisticuffs. If brawling still isn't doing it, you can draw your sword. The fallout system takes into account how dangerously you engaged in the conflict, and you may suffer more severe injury the more you escalate the situation in an effort to win the conflict. It covers everything from courtly rumors and gossip to shaking down a merchant to barroom brawls to deadly battlefield combat. If there's a conflict with stakes involved you can roll the dice and up the ante.

The primary problem of this system is it requires some third party arbitration, otherwise you may end up with arguments about whether or not a trait or relationship applies to a given situation. It also takes a little practice to get used to how the system flows, but it's totally worth it. This system's focus on conflict resolution is quite revolutionary in the RPG field, and it's possible to make balanced characters who can still have substantially different capabilities based on the nature of the conflict in question. Even if you don't care to use the system, I suggest checking it out and possibly incorporating some of the elements into your own system.

Verad · **10-06-2014, 01:51 PM**

(10-06-2014, 01:08 PM)Myxie Tryxle Wrote: Â Dogs in the Vineyard. Â

Yes, good, provide more indie RPGs. We're used to things like D&D and Shadowrun, but I find that the small-press indie market, with its emphasis on simple mechanics and on narrative construction, offer a lot more to the MMO RPer who wants to include dice than is the case with traditional games.

Another option would be The Mountain Witch, whose only real statistic is Trust - how much do you trust the people around you? The more you do, the more they can help you by boosting your dice rolls, but the more opportunities they have to betray you. Great for lengthy storylines where a few people will be together for an extended period of time.

Tiergan · **10-06-2014, 02:25 PM**

(10-06-2014, 01:08 PM)Myxie Tryxle Wrote: One system I found very useful for confronting these sorts of conflicts is Dogs in the Vineyard. In that system, you can make balanced characters with very different capabilities. All the attributes a character has must be very descriptive and have a unique flavor.
<snip>

This kind of reminds me a little of Verad's neat system and I *really* like both because they are a lot more thorough in covering more unique aspects of everyone's character. I'm admittedly a little scared of tossing in too many modifiers, because it has the potential to make things more unwieldy for when a GM isn't standing by. I also know a few folks that don't have a lot of table-top experience and they glaze over the second making a character sheet gets too complex, so my goal was to use something simple enough for them to run with (Faolan's system was super successful with non-tabletop folks because of how easy it was to understand during his campaign.)

What I might do is borrow ideas from Verad's Fate System (if that's okay?) and let people select/create 3 character skills that they are Fair(+2), Good(+3), and Great(+4) at. Everyone is allowed to use skills only twice per event/day. (Like the Fate Points) If a GM/DM isn't present, you have to announce OOC what skill you're going to be using and what bonus it offers. It'll run on honour system that you're not using your skills more often than you should.

I'll have to grab a few of my non-tabletop friends and see if this makes them skittish or if I'm being paranoid.

(10-06-2014, 09:58 AM)Knight Kat Wrote: I like the idea of character sheets, and this one looked nice simple until it got to the second and third part. It seems like I may be the only one confused by a few things.

Firstly, what are artifact fragments? That is not explained, so it makes the whole energy and Sanity part have no context that I can see.

Secondly, in combat when you choose one attribute for your attacks, is that the attribute you use for every attack during the whole plot? Or just that fight? Or just that attack in that one fight? In other words, can you use different attributes for different attacks during a single battle?

And when it comes to rolling; the example was if you use Fortitude as your attack attribute, and you have 4 points in Fortitude then you would roll 1d20 four times, but don't do 4d20 because that would add them all up. However, if you do not add up the numbers of the four rolls, how do you use the rolls? If you do add up the numbers of the four rolls, why does it say not to let rolls.org do it automatically with a 4d20?

I feel like I'm missing something, and it could be that I should just avoid trying to evaluate character sheet systems this early in the morning XD

Artifacts and their fragments are not explained for a reason. Wink

People will see what they are and what they're for during an event I have planned. The Energy and Sanity stats will make sense in context with what I have planned.

As for combat, I'm probably going to swap out what I originally had for the whole Magic --- Physical thing I described a little further down the thread. It gives people more options on how powerful they think their character is in relation to others. (Though I might tweak things a little so that the less points you input in Magic/Melee, the more of a benefit you get elsewhere.)

It makes combat a lot more simple and straight forward. Basically if your character is Physical 4, and you're facing off against someone Physical 1, you roll 4d20 (rolz.org adds it all together for you) and the opponent rolls 1d20. You have a greater chance of beating out the other person, obviously, but they still have a chance of winning if you roll badly. (Maybe it was just an off day for your character. :V)

Your Physical and Magic stat also dictate your Physical and Magic defense. So if someone with Magic 4 is attacking you and you have only Magic 1 -- they have a greater chance of hurting you.

Tiergan · **10-06-2014, 02:27 PM**

(10-06-2014, 01:51 PM)Verad Wrote: Another option would be The Mountain Witch, whose only real statistic is Trust - how much do you trust the people around you? The more you do, the more they can help you by boosting your dice rolls, but the more opportunities they have to betray you. Great for lengthy storylines where a few people will be together for an extended period of time.

This sounds AWESOME. I'm really curious on how the Trust stat works and how it gives people more opportunities to betray. It sounds like it really pushes things to be a lot more narrative.

Sounsyy · **10-06-2014, 03:27 PM**

I'm all around excited for all of this. (This wouldn't happen to be part of your Ala Mhigan/Garlean plot?)

I will add that as someone who never did a lot of tabletop RP, Faolan's system was really easy to understand and see playing out in an in-game setting. I'm also pretty big fan of Verad's point system (I tried making a character sheet earlier for Sounsyy) but admit I got a little lost the further down the instructions I went. But that could've just been a) too early in the morning b) me being a tabletop derp. =o

My only question about Faolan's system was about Sanity and artifacts. Like supposing this was your character setup (it is actually sounsyy's...):

MUTABILITY----------- o o o â— â— | â— â— â— o o ------------FORTITUDE
EMPATHY-------------- o o o o â— | â— â— â— â— o ------INDEPENDENCE
INSTINCT--------------- o â— â— â— â— | â— o o o o --------------- WISDOM

Sounsyy would only have 2 Sanity, but 8 Energy right? Meaning she could only successfully use two artifacts despite having the energy to try eight. So is there another use for Energy or is it more appropriate to think of this stat as a resource you can't restore and have to manage carefully throughout the RP?

FreelanceWizard · **10-06-2014, 03:35 PM**

If we're tossing out different system ideas... Smile

As a totally different approach, you can view these conflicts as a way for people to exert narrative control in a story. Characters that are more naturally suited to be dominant in a situation need their players to exert less influence on the narrative to succeed, while characters whose success would be unexpected need more narrative influence to succeed. To make that sentence more concrete, when the warrior fights the barmaid, it takes less narrative influence and justification for the warrior to win the fight -- but sometimes the barmaid wins because that's where the story needs to go. However, for the barmaid to win, there has to be a lot more narrative influence behind her.

To that end, one system I've been kicking around uses tokens, not dice, and has people describe their characters in one sentence...

Show Content

The system
...in terms of 3 assets and 2 optional faults. For instance, the barmaid might be a cheerful(asset 1) barmaid(2) with a heart of gold(3) who's naÃ¯ve(fault 1) and gets in over her head(2). Every player then has 20 expendable "tokens" they can bid to achieve narrative effects. Whenever a conflict about what happens next in the story occurs, the players can bid for free any assets that might apply (the rule being that everyone other than the bidder has to veto an asset for it not apply) and can bid additional tokens along with narration to increase their narrative "value" to resolve the conflict. They can also bid their own flaws to reduce their total but steal tokens from the other player, to be added to their pool after resolution is complete. The players go back and forth, bidding tokens associated with narration until the party whose value is lower gives up, at which point they lose and emote defeat.

The trick is that the tokens you can spend are limited over a certain duration (a day, a scene, a story, or what have you), so people have a strong motivation to take a fall using their faults to build up tokens to use later when they don't have a lot of assets in play, to go along with others' narration when it makes sense to not unnecessarily burn tokens, and people who want their characters to do things they're not good at find themselves with less ability to control the narrative later on.

An example of play, given the warrior (a burly bruiser master of arms who's easily distracted with a hair-trigger) and the barmaid might be:
W: *flips the table over and charges towards the barmaid, trying to bring his giant fists down upon her head* (bid: burly, bruiser = 2)
B: *shrieks and runs towards the door, clearly out of her depth* (bid: gets in over her head = -1, +1 pool from W)
W: *intercepts the barmaid, standing over her* "Bad, bad move there, girl." (no bid)
B: *looks around, then grabs a heavy iron kettle filled with stew and flings it at the warrior* (bid: 4 tokens = 3)
W: *falls to ground howling, his face smeared with hot stew, and utters curses foul enough to make a Lominsan sailor blush* (concede defeat)

An extension to this system, if one wants to add the randomness of dice, is to add a fate die that can be invoked at the cost of one token by either party to the conflict. You roll 1d6 and subtract (if a 1, 2, or 3) or add (if a 4, 5, or 6, with 4 counting as +1, 5 as +2, and 6 and +3) the listed number from your value in that conflict. Either party can invoke the fate die, but it can only be invoked once per conflict.

Relative strength is accounted for in this system by giving more experienced parties more tokens or assets, so they have more narrative influence. The means by which that is determined is left as an exercise of the user of the system.

Tiergan · **10-06-2014, 03:42 PM**

(10-06-2014, 03:27 PM)Sounsyy Wrote: I'm all around excited for all of this. (This wouldn't happen to be part of your Ala Mhigan/Garlean plot?)

I will add that as someone who never did a lot of tabletop RP, Faolan's system was really easy to understand and see playing out in an in-game setting. I'm also pretty big fan of Verad's point system (I tried making a character sheet earlier for Sounsyy) but admit I got a little lost the further down the instructions I went. But that could've just been a) too early in the morning b) me being a tabletop derp. =o

My only question about Faolan's system was about Sanity and artifacts. Like supposing this was your character setup (it is actually sounsyy's...):

MUTABILITY----------- o o o â— â— | â— â— â— o o ------------FORTITUDE
EMPATHY-------------- o o o o â— | â— â— â— â— o ------INDEPENDENCE
INSTINCT--------------- o â— â— â— â— | â— o o o o --------------- WISDOM

Sounsyy would only have 2 Sanity, but 8 Energy right? Meaning she could only successfully use two artifacts despite having the energy to try eight. So is there another use for Energy or is it more appropriate to think of this stat as a resource you can't restore and have to manage carefully throughout the RP?

I was thinking I might have to retool Energy and Sanity a bit. They did different things in Faolan's original version, but he also had a very different (and TOTALLY AWESOME) setting/goal for everything. I'll have to think more on what I want the system to do and figure out how I can make Energy/Sanity reflect that better.

I don't mind that people can have super tiny numbers for their stats though. In Faolan's campaign, Tiergan only had 2 Sanity as well, and he was always on the brink of losing it all. BUT, I was always a little tempted to just let Tiergan lose his mind, because Faolan repeatedly told us that "Death is not the end." Someone eventually actually 'died' and we learned that it unlocked a whole other aspect of the story for that person. I kind of want to mirror the same thing so that people don't entirely have to fear hitting zero in a certain stat for a day.

Also, yes, this is definitely for the Garlean/Ala Mhigan/Eorzean event. I'm really glad everyone's giving their input because it lets me tweak everything. Once I finalize a system, I'm going to put a friend who's never made a character sheet before through it and see how much trouble they have,

Verad · **10-06-2014, 03:55 PM**

(10-06-2014, 02:27 PM)Tiergan Wrote:
(10-06-2014, 01:51 PM)Verad Wrote: Another option would be The Mountain Witch, whose only real statistic is Trust - how much do you trust the people around you? The more you do, the more they can help you by boosting your dice rolls, but the more opportunities they have to betray you. Great for lengthy storylines where a few people will be together for an extended period of time.

This sounds AWESOME. Â I'm really curious on how the Trust stat works and how it gives people more opportunities to betray. Â It sounds like it really pushes things to be a lot more narrative.

It's been a while since I've done this, so I may not remember all the particulars, but here are the generals:

At the start of a campaign of Mountain Witch, players take some arbitrary means of determining initial trust. In the corebook, this is their sign in the Chinese Zodiac, which tells them which characters they are neutral towards (2 Trust), favorable towards (3 Trust), and hostile towards (1 Trust). A similar system could probably be put together in FFXIV based on the astral and umbral moons.

In game itself, characters need not have equal levels of trust. For example, say we have Verad, Nat, and Roen in the same game, to use my more recent RP. Verad might have a very high level of Trust available for Roen, probably 5 or more, while Roen may not have the same level. He might have a very low level of Trust for Nat, while Nat may have a more neutral amount of it, etc.

In-game conflicts are determined by each participant rolling 1d6, with high roll winning, and the quality of success determined by the difference between a high and a low roll. Other players can intervene in a conflict by spending the Trust given to them. Spending a point of Trust to help a player gives them an extra 1d6 to add to their total. Spending a point of Trust to betray a player gives their opposition a +1 to their total. However, only one point of Trust can be spent to help, and any amount of Trust can be spent to betray.

This assistance need not be direct, and a character need not be physically present to help/betray. As Freelance's game indicates, Trust is used for narrative control. It could be that using a point to help a player is just a means of inspiring a character to think of their friends and perform more effectively, etc.

Gameplay is divided into "Chapters," and at the end of each chapter, players can choose to either give a character more or less Trust. If you give them more, they get an extra point of it, but you can reduce how much Trust you have by any amount, even down to 0. So, again to use the same characters, at the end of a chapter, Verad might begrudgingly respect Nat based on in-game actions, and therefore give her an extra point, bringing her total up to 2 for the next chapter. Nat is under no obligation to give Verad more or less trust, and so keeps her value constant.

Verad · **10-06-2014, 04:00 PM**

(10-06-2014, 03:27 PM)Sounsyy Wrote: I will add that as someone who never did a lot of tabletop RP, Faolan's system was really easy to understand and see playing out in an in-game setting. I'm also pretty big fan of Verad's point system (I tried making a character sheet earlier for Sounsyy) but admit I got a little lost the further down the instructions I went. But that could've just been a) too early in the morning b) me being a tabletop derp. =o

It has some organization issues as a result of being on Google Drive. I am happy to entertain questions if you need help.

FreelanceWizard · **10-06-2014, 04:08 PM**

I suppose I should be helpful and post some feedback. Smile

Generally, I like the system, but it does assume everyone is on equal footing narratively, which can be complicated as others have pointed out.

Mathematically, you really only have 3 choices for each attribute pair because of the pairing: 2/3, 1/4, and 0/5, and 0/5 requires GM permission. 2/3 is the probably the best from a min-max standpoint, since it maximally reduces your probability to be hit. The smart player will employ their largest pool against any opponent's smallest, so you want to ensure you don't have any very small pool; at worst, you're facing 5d20 versus your 2d20, but usually, it's going to be 2d20 vs. 2d20 or 3d20 vs. 2d20 -- I'll take those odds, thanks. Smile

You want to put your 3s in the stats that provide derived statistics to maximize how long you can stay up.

I'm not sure there's a good solution to this, especially since it can be hard to argue against an average character from a min/max standpoint. It puts you in the unenviable position of having to tell someone their character isn't good enough at something. Smile

One solution is to keep the stat pairs but just give people some number of points (12 feels good?) to spread across them as they see fit. That introduces some hard choices while retaining the paired attributes' disadvantage for those who are hyper-specialized.

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Static Rolls VS Character Sheets?

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