I'm pondering switching to something simpler like Genesys where there's a communal pool that players access, and as you spend those tokens they go to the GM. When the GM spends them they go back to the player pool.
BUT I really like the idea of Doom being a pool of points that is
Invoking too often also meant the GM never had any available to choose to use.
🤔 maybe I only generate a point of doom when the player rolls multiple 1s AND I modify how many have to exist before being invoked & how many get used as a result of the invoke.
That's 3 separate levers to tweak at once though, and I don't like that.
Lesson from last night. Don't reinvent perfectly good wheels. 🤦♀️
Went hunting through systems for examples, eventually pulled out FATE - which I've already grabbed some ideas from - and "lo and behold" there was a perfectly good Doom Pool analog. Player's pools last the whole session. GM's pools are reset each scene they're needed in, to the number of players. Except for a weird edge case where an NPC can have FATE points that carry across scenes
Technically the GM has 2 pools of FATE points. simplified: if you're giving a player a point it comes from an infinite ♾️ pool. If you're complicating a character's life in the scene it comes from the limited pool.
Anyway, I took that nice foundation that we KNOW works well, threw out the inapplicable bits, bolted on a couple new bits and voilà a token economy whose core elements are pre-tested. 🎉
To summarize: Unless you're @robindlaws or someone with a game mechanics 🧠 that's really experienced like his, you probably shouldn't be using your "cool mechanic".
a) it's probably broken in ways you don't understand yet.
b) something probably already exists that's very close, well tested, and known to work.
The hubris of inexperience will make you think you're more skilled than you are.
--
Also, Yay solo playtesting 🎉 for heading this off before anyone else used it. 😉
@niten my problem with the PbtA approach is that it’s very hard to succeed Without complications
AND it’s missing many of the variants
extra success
simple success
success with complication
failure with positive side effect
simple failure
failure with complications
Also i want to have doom to be separate from complications on a roll. It’s a good resource for the GM to complicate lives outside of rolls, and minimize unimportant rolls.
@niten I don't remember if Genesys gets ALL those variants (it's hard to do that) BUT to your point it's not good for newbs. There's WAY too many things on the character sheet, and "Unintuitive" doesn't even begin to describe those dice symbols. 🤦♀️ Also, you can't buy the dice so...
I love the idea of the narrative dice but i really don't like their symbol choices OR the ones they did for star wars. It just makes everything harder with NO indication if one of those dingbats is good or bad.
@niten I think PbtA is a great starting point for folks new to TTRPGs. maybe the best. But I feel like my character is incompetent because it's SO HARD to succeed without causing some sort of complication.
I LOVE complicating players lives, but not EVERY TIME THEY ROLL. That's just maddening.
@niten admittedly Genesys / Star Wars has a LOT success w/ complication too. It's also just hard as a GM constantly coming up with some new complication to introduce.
Speaking of newbs and PbtA and derivatives though, i really like the mechanics of Ironsword & Starforged. My only concern re newbs is the sheer number of moves available. But, the dice mechanic feels great, and the moves are well written, and it works SO well
@herrold@niten sourcing the table is great, but my bigger problem is the ratio of complications to rolls is too high for my liking.
Shadow of Yesterday: just skimmed - i see "gift dice" for players to help rolls, but nothing like a doom pool for the GM to complicate players' lives. did i miss it?
The One Ring: "Shadow Points" looks promising. thanks. I'd forgotten about it and am digging into it now.
@herrold@niten "Shadow Points" are interesting, but quite right for this application, however they did give me an idea. In the Year Zero Engine "pushing" a roll incurs a direct negative effect. In my variant it's physical or mental harm as relevant. BUT Something in the Shadow Points description made me think that that'd be a great point to generate Doom.
Also, the dice probabilities are such that you need to push frequently. So... Thanks !🙇♀️ That'll definitely help fix things a little
but yes i think "only call for a roll when failure is interesting" is something ALL GMs should focus on. Also I like just not rolling if it's something the character is competent at and there's no reasonable chance they would fail, even if failure would be interesting.
Pet peeve: I hate how Matt Mercer's players walk in a room and ask "is there a chair in here?" and he's like "roll a perception check" ARGH!
@niten I'm the opposite. I have Genesys dice but not Star Wars dice. Also, I'm not a huge star wars geek so those symbols have no inherent meaning for me either.
i didn't know there was a text only roller. thanks for that.
I like the option of dice rollers, but personally I really prefer rolling physical dice. Also, i suspect that once a newb starts with them they'll probably never learn what any of the symbols means. ;)
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