[RPG Theory] Advantage and Action

[stevekenson]

Generally in RPGs you have some sort of die roll to resolve actions and modifiers to that die roll, usually in the form of bonuses or penalties applied to the resulting number(s). Those modifiers vary quickly, from action to action. More often than not, they’re less important than the die roll itself, few modifiers are enough to ensure success or failure and most of the tension comes, not from the modifiers, but from the uncertainty of the die roll itself.

What about an approach wherein the modifiers, the build-up of advantage, was the thing that mattered, and the tension came from the time necessary to do so? For example, say a character has one chance at a task and, without any prep, it’s a 50/50 but each round spent preparing—whether testing an opponent’s defenses and dancing around or working painstakingly over the ship’s broken hyperdrive—increases the chance by 5%. So with 10 rounds of prep, the character will succeed, but will he have the time? What if his opponent lunges first and gets a lucky hit? What if the Empire’s star-fighters close in and destroy the ship before it can go to hyperspeed? Then it becomes a gamble: do you prepare this round or go for it? What about next round? How about now? What are you doing to improve your chances? Looks like you enemy is closing in, is 65% enough? How about 70%... and you go for it!

This is a somewhat different approach from the micromanaged, round-to-round action, such as: attack roll, defense roll, attack roll, defense roll, etc. or rolling an action, failing, rolling again, failing, then rolling a third time and getting lucky and succeeding. Rather than rolling the lesser actions, they’re just prep to the big gamble of the final action that decides it all.

Comments

[gamescribe.livejournal.com]

In a way, that's *kind* of what Taking 20 (to use the d20 vernacular) represents, right? The only difference being that you sometimes just CANNOT take 20. What if the mechanic was expanded so you could "Take 15" or "Take 17" or something, based on how long you spent doing it? Remove those situations where you just CAN'T take 20 and have it to where if you take the risk to take 20 then you might end up with the result you want, or 5 rounds before your 20 kicks in the Empire shows up and shoots you.

You might make taking 10 the baseline, and basically each additional round you spent doing the action or prepping for it bumped you one step up. So taking 20 wouldn't really take 20 times as long, just 10 times as long.

[xomec.livejournal.com]

In a way, that's *kind* of what Taking 20 (to use the d20 vernacular) represents, right?

Kinda-sorta, except taking 20 is just supposed to speed up routine checks where the character basically has unlimited time and no stress (in other words, a measure of "can you do this at all, given the opportunity or is it just beyond you?"). Like you say, it would have to be applied differently to action situations, but it could be a logical extension of the mechanic.

[wordwill.livejournal.com]

I've tried out two homebrew systems somewhat like this, one using percentiles and one using a Storytelling variation. Neither was as directly elegant as what you're suggesting, though.

My experience was that this whole other language for action in the game world didn't go over so well with casual players, unfortunately.

[xomec.livejournal.com]

I can see that. In fact, in my experience, one of the hardest things about game mechanics is actually explaining them in such a way that makes senses and appeals to players and potential players of the game. The cleverest game mechanic is of no use of nobody but the designer "gets it".