Static Rolls VS Character Sheets?

[Verad]

 

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.

 

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]

 

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]

I suppose I should be helpful and post some feedback.

 

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. 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. 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.