Things just get harder...

[ffutures]

This is a very tentative idea for skill etc. use in the fanfic game.

Basically, the Diana system makes some skill use very easy. I think I want to add a mechanism so that the first time around easy things are easy, but if you keep on using the same shtick again and again there are penalties. Eg. Clarkson has "Drive really fast" 6, the first time he uses it he just has to roll one success, The second time and subsequent times he uses it he needs at least two successes. But if he had a second relevant skill such as "soup up vehicles" he could use that again without penalty.

I think it may be too complicated for the sort of cinematic games I have in mind - maybe the GM just needs to ask for more successes as the adventure progresses, it might be simpler.

Thoughts?

Comments

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I would say that there isn't any need to make it get harder. Simple probability will mean that, no matter how good you are, eventually you will roll a fail. Repeated use should only incur penalties if fatigue (or external factors such as ice) started to be a factor; Clarkson, in real life, can Drive Really Fast over and over again without even thinking about it - but if the challenge has kept him awake for twenty-six hours straight he's going to screw up or be forced to slow down.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

True enough.

[armb.livejournal.com]

But a note to the GM saying that if a character is getting over reliant on a single skill, he can require more successes to keep the game interesting might still be plausible. Justify it as the character getting sloppy with over-confidence.
But telling the player you will reward innovation might be a more positive way of having the same effect, even if the scenario is such that unfortunately one character has one skill that really would be obviously useful again and again and again. (Of course you try and avoid designing the scenario that way - why are grandmothers stereotypically skilled at egg sucking?)

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

Don't make it harder - reduce the skill. Pretty much the same net effect.

Will need a way to get stuff back.

Hang on - might need some book keeping -what about if a skill is made up of a preset group of dice or bonus- so clarksons 'drive real fast' of six is a skill of +2 +4 +4 +6 maybe- everytime you use the skill you use one of those bonus (before or after roll) - you get them all back when they have all been used.

It's a good idea for a genre savvy game - because characters do not do the same thing over and over again....

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

too complicated, I think - I'm trying to avoid book keeping.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Maybe some form of token or card?

The first time you use a skill it's at max. Use it again and you turn the card a quarter turn, or flip the token, or something like that, and it's level is lowered.

Use it creatively, or use a different skill (in a significant way) and the card/token is flipped back to full strength.

No real bookkeeping, just a visual indicator.

Hm. Thinking in terms of a referee (my old Traveller roots coming out), what about using a football analogy? If the GM feels you're getting in a rut your skill/talent/whatever gets yellow-carded. If you use it with a yellow card you get a minor performance penalty and it gets red-carded, which is a major performance penalty. Use it creatively, or try another shtick, and the GM can remove penalty cards.

To work easily you'd need a character sheet with room for tokens (and only a few skills/talents/whatever, but that's how I tend to do things so this would work for me.

[johnreiher.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar with the Diana system, but one way of balancing things out is to include flaws. So Clarkson has "Overconfident" at -2 and "Boorish" at -3.

If it's dice pools, then he rolls negative dice along with the positive dice. Every successful negative roll cancels a positive roll.

[gfieendish.livejournal.com]

The only snag with the former, is that some power gamers will take as many flaws as possible as mentioned above, in order to gain extra character points to use during initial character generation...


As for the initial dilemma, the 1990's Hard Boiled RPG (Hong Kong Action Movie Genre) overcame this problem, by making the players state precisely in a cinematic style, what they were going to do during their turn.
If they failed to do this, or just merely stated that they were using their skill, then the referee was perfectly entitled to impose a hidden negative modifier to any rolls that said sloppy player made...

[johnreiher.livejournal.com]

Good points, but I was thinking of how the Truth and Justice game, using PDQ, handles flaws: You must take one flaw (-2). The flaw must affect you at least a quarter of the time. So you can't take "Hates Paisley" but instead you could take "Overconfident boor". The benefit of taking the flaw is that when the GM applies it to you character, you get a "hero point".

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I think on the whole that I don't want to go overboard on making problems - it's really just a matter of figuring out the number of traits / characteristics / skills / whatever the characters get and putting in some guidelines for the referee on ways to discourage power-gamers. Mostly characters in this game will be successful - that's the nature of the genre - it just needs to be fun!