RPG Wiki - User contributions [en]

Noodling/Resolution RPG

2022-05-21T23:07:25Z

Inky:

Misc notes on action resolution and granularity and stuff.

==Action Costs==
Related to the stuff in [[Noodling/Permissions RPG]], you can note a couple things about costs/prerequisites for actions:
* Reliability: It can be a thing where if you can do it, you just do it, or it can be a thing where you have to do a skill roll to see if you can do it
* Character creation resource: It can be a thing where doing it requires having made some investment at character creation (presumably buying a relevant aspect)
* Game play resource: It can be a thing where doing it requires spending some at-playtime resource (ie, fate point)
* Game world resource: It can be a thing where doing it requires additional in-world support, like having the right tools

Where it gets interesting is there can be some fungibility here: you can say either you need the aspect or you need the right tools; or either you make the skill roll or you spend a fate point. Or "and" instead of "or" - if you make the skill roll, you can spend a fate point to also do X.

==Granularity==

The new 7th Sea book has some nice stuff that endorses acting at a slightly larger granularity that people might otherwise - "spend a fate point while hiding to decoy a guard over to you and knock them out", "spend a fate point to lure someone off into a room with you and subdue them". I don't know if these sequences should be sort of specifically called-out larger grains than usual, or if there is some principle here that can be identified, or if this should just be the default resolution granularity.

I think maybe what's going on is if the player comes up with a plan, and it involves doing A then B then C, then first see if it's ok to just do one roll for the whole plan. This is especially true if failures at any stage scrap the whole plan (in that case having multiple rolls mostly just decreases the chance of success for the plan).

===Combat Granularity===
Most combat is too small a granularity - maybe things should be resolved in three rounds or so.

On consideration I think it's not correct to codify things in terms of number of rounds in the rules. Rather, the issue is something more like this:
* Minor injuries to PCs usually don't change their behavior in the current fight
* Partially-injured NPC opponents don't really change their behavior and don't make you want to change yours
* Therefore both successful attacks (where you damage your opponent) and unsuccessful ones (where they damage you) are uninteresting the first couple times they happen, and often when your action in round 1 is "I attack the guy with my sword", that is also your action in round 2 (and often when that's one PC's action in round 1, it is also every other PC's action).

Brute squads are basically a way to disguise the problem - "you're making a difference, honest! you just took out two guys!" but of course the real guy is the five-person brute squad and that is basically acting the same after you take out some of the brutes (albeit at a lower strength).

So I think the principle here is basically like this, which doesn't have to be specific rules because it's part of the general bucket for skill resolution principles: if you've got a situation that is too big to resolve with a single roll, and the player's action is "I try to resolve the entire situation", then whether they succeed or fail (and change the total number of checkmarks in the victory column), there has to be a corresponding story situation change too, and not just a cosmetic one. Furthermore, "let it ride" applies if you try to roll the same action in the same situation, and both people know this. That is, if there is a five-person brute squad and the player says "I charge in wildly!" and the PC strikes down two brutes, then, unless the PC is already beaten up and the damage the remaining members of the brute squad might do before dying matters, the brute squad has to change tactics. Otherwise the correct resolution to the original roll isn't "you take out two guys", it's "you quickly strike down two of the guards; the others charge at you, but soon the other three are also on the ground". So instead, the guards should change tactics (resulting in a story situation change): "You strike down two of the guards; the other three panic, and turn to flee. You strike down one as they run, but the remaining two make it to cover in a doorway, shouting loudly for help". Derived principle: on the second round, either it shouldn't make sense to roll the original skill again, or rolling it should clearly produce a different outcome (say in the first round you were sparring for an opening, and now in the second a success has a real chance to end the fight; or maybe in the first round you pressed on despite exhaustion, and now the second round is about seeing if you can take them out before you're too tired to go on).

Note that by getting more details about the PC's actions ("I attack her" "How more specifically?" "I feint left and then charge in, past her defenses") you can get it so the situation is different each round (in round 1 the PC and opponent are far apart; in round 2 they're closer together) but this may just be a cosmetic difference in many cases, which isn't good enough.

==Resolution==
Given the previous sections, it seems like the right sort of thing is the GM decides how much in-play weight a problem should have, and then when the player proposes actions that'll resolve it, the GM can figure out how to size the resolution of the action. Given that, they can decide on the right success/failure effects. Couple implications of this:
* There's no explicit rules things about brute squads vs regular people - the GM can decide that this fight against five people gets resolved in the same number of die rolls as a fight against one, and separately they can decide whether it's an easy challenge or a hard one.
* Part of the GM's job is also to map the mechanical effects to the necessary story transitions that have to occur when the action succeeds/fails, and there are two ways to do that - with some skill check at point X, the GM can decide to just give the player what they're asking for on everything in the story up to X, or they can say that the skill check actually covers everything in the story up to X - this distinction matters when you're looking at what's true if the check fails fails; in the former case only X itself is up for grabs, but in the latter case the failure could be anywhere up to X.

==Effects==
Bumping in here six years later or whatever to comment that another kind of slider to adjust is the effect of the rolls. I guess this is an expansion of the let it ride comment about the brute squad. Like, it's also possible that instead of changing the situation, you (the GM) can yield the point and make it about something else - "Ok, you'll defeat them, roll a fighting check to see how much damage you take in the process." Or you can up-front add a separate rider on the outcomes of the roll, like "Roll to see whether your wild charge wins you the fight or not, but either way you'll take damage." So I guess then the question is how you decide whether to run this as one roll or multiple.

Itinerant Royalty Errands/Client

2021-01-02T01:28:33Z

Inky:

==Overview==
Client (and server) code.

==Views==
* Character sheet
** Widget to allow cancelling or finishing a project
* Full hexmap
** Widget for more info about a hex
* Season view - play phase
** Widget for displaying a completed turn
** Widget for resolving an encounter card
** Widget for resolving a choice card
** Widget for accepting the reward/penalty as a result of a card
** Widget for requesting intervention
* Season view - letter phase
* Season view - GM phase
** Widget for creating a proposal
** Widget for displaying proposals
* GM view
** Widget for displaying completed events
** Widget for seeing proposals waiting approval and accepting them

Itinerant Royalty Errands/Client

2021-01-02T01:28:10Z

Inky: Created page with "## Overview Client (and server) code. ## Views * Character sheet ** Widget to allow cancelling or finishing a project * Full hexmap ** Widget for more info about a hex * Seas..."

## Overview
Client (and server) code.

## Views
* Character sheet
** Widget to allow cancelling or finishing a project
* Full hexmap
** Widget for more info about a hex
* Season view - play phase
** Widget for displaying a completed turn
** Widget for resolving an encounter card
** Widget for resolving a choice card
** Widget for accepting the reward/penalty as a result of a card
** Widget for requesting intervention
* Season view - letter phase
* Season view - GM phase
** Widget for creating a proposal
** Widget for displaying proposals
* GM view
** Widget for displaying completed events
** Widget for seeing proposals waiting approval and accepting them

Itinerant Royalty Errands/Engine

2020-12-31T22:58:16Z

Inky: /* Fronts */

==Overview==
Stuff about the game engine (excluding data).

==Map==
The map is a collection of hexes.

===Hexes===
A hex is a location on the map. A hex has coordinates, an associated region, an associated country, a terrain type, and an additional difficulty rating. Regions and countries are groupings of hexes.

===Terrain===
Terrain is what the hex is composed of. A terrain has name, some base danger rating, some base movement rating, and an encounter deck.

===Tokens===
Tokens are things tracked on the map (they can be players, NPCs, artifacts, small locations, etc). Tokens are located in a particular hex, carried by another token, or in limbo. Tokens can support zero or more custom interactions.

==Character==
Each player has a character in the game (NPCs are tracked as tokens or fronts). Characters have a job (they always have exactly one) and a level within that job and a rarity adjustment for the encounters in the job deck, a collection of stats (in particular, counters for each resource, health, royalty, plus data for their current job), a collection of skills (skills + xp total, which then gets mapped to a rank, probably 20/25/25/25/30), a collection of talents, and a collection of projects.

===Jobs===
Jobs have a name, a rank (used mostly for switching across job trees), zero or more promotion jobs, zero or more demotion jobs, a base encounter difficulty, an encounter deck. Jobs have a default encounter deck rarity (eg, 4xA, 2xB, 2xC, 1xE-H) but this can change for a particular character over time.

===Projects===
Projects are an ongoing thing the character is working on (building something, organizing something, researching something, searching for something). Projects have a name, approach type (this determines skills used for the project), xp, resources devoted (these two together determine rank), and a status (ongoing, completed, canceled).

==Actions==
Actions are individual mechanical changes - Token X moves to hex A3, Player Foo's health increases by 10, etc. Actions are grouped into events.

===Events===
An event is a thing that happened in the game. An event is a name plus a list of associated actions.

===Proposals===
A proposal is a suggested event (this is the main mechanic for GM/player interaction). Proposals have to be accepted by somebody; once they do, the event is created and takes effect. Proposals can be active or accepted or rejected.

==Decks==
Decks are collections of cards. When empty, they're refilled from one or more template decks (in some cases with adjustment, per the job encounter deck rarity thing as above).

===Tableau===
In some cases there's a face-up tableau of cards which the player can choose from instead of drawing directly from the deck. When cards from the tableau are drawn they are refilled from the deck. Cards in the tableau will age out after a certain number of turns. Cards in the tableau are partly visible to players - they're only fully visible when selected.

===Encounter Cards===
Encounter cards are the typical card. They consist of one or more checks, where each is with a particular skill against a particular difficulty with a particular reward and penalty.

===Other Cards===
Other cards don't have checks but offer choices between items, or just an event, or a single check that's not an encounter as such.

==Seasons==
A round of the game is called a season. The season consists of three phases. Each player does each phase in order, but they don't have to wait for other players to finish the first two phases before advancing to the next one (then everyone remains in the third phase until the season is over).

===Play Phase===
In the play phase, the players have 20 turns to spend doing normal play (drawing and resolving cards, doing custom interactions, traveling, etc).

===Rumor Phase===
In the rumor phase, each player is given another player to write. They give an update on what has happened this season (during the play phase), and pass on any rumors they have about upcoming events. In addition, there are two mechanical pieces. The player is given a change in their own circumstances (eg, a change in the rarity of various encounters), and must pick between a few fronts and advancing them in some way.

===GM Phase===
In the GM phase, players can make GM-level corrections to the mechanical state of the world (eg, move a character around, whatever). These are all proposals.

===Season Ending===
The season ends when everyone marks the GM phase as completed, or a certain amount of time has elapsed from the start of the season. If someone has not completed the play phase when the season ends, any in-progress encounters are considered fled (or failed, if they can't be fled). If someone has not completed the rumor phase when the season ends, no letter is sent, their circumstances change still occurs, and a front change is randomly decided on and occurs. If there are proposals still open in the GM phase when the season ends, they are automatically cancelled.

==Fronts==
Fronts are the mechanic/story interface for ongoing NPC activity (eg, the western empire invades, the skeleton king gathers an army in the desert, the cult of the snake god is replacing leaders in governments everywhere). Fronts can exist at the region level, at the kingdom level, or at the empire (ie, global) level. Fronts have xp, which maps to level. They have a variety of talents which apply effects to the area they cover (eg, make all hexes more dangerous).

Itinerant Royalty Errands/Engine

2020-12-31T22:33:19Z

Inky: /* Seasons */

Itinerant Royalty Errands/Engine

2020-12-31T21:32:48Z

Inky:

==Overview==
Stuff about the game engine (excluding data).

==Map==
The map is a collection of hexes.

===Hexes===
A hex is a location on the map. A hex has coordinates, an associated region, an associated country, a terrain type, and an additional difficulty rating. Regions and countries are groupings of hexes.

===Terrain===
Terrain is what the hex is composed of. A terrain has name, some base danger rating, some base movement rating, and an encounter deck.

===Tokens===
Tokens are things tracked on the map (they can be players, NPCs, artifacts, small locations, etc). Tokens are located in a particular hex, carried by another token, or in limbo. Tokens can support zero or more custom interactions.

==Character==
Each player has a character in the game (NPCs are tracked as tokens or fronts). Characters have a job (they always have exactly one) and a level within that job and a rarity adjustment for the encounters in the job deck, a collection of stats (in particular, counters for each resource, health, royalty, plus data for their current job), a collection of skills (skills + xp total, which then gets mapped to a rank, probably 20/25/25/25/30), a collection of talents, and a collection of projects.

===Jobs===
Jobs have a name, a rank (used mostly for switching across job trees), zero or more promotion jobs, zero or more demotion jobs, a base encounter difficulty, an encounter deck. Jobs have a default encounter deck rarity (eg, 4xA, 2xB, 2xC, 1xE-H) but this can change for a particular character over time.

===Projects===
Projects are an ongoing thing the character is working on (building something, organizing something, researching something, searching for something). Projects have a name, approach type (this determines skills used for the project), xp, resources devoted (these two together determine rank), and a status (ongoing, completed, canceled).

==Actions==
Actions are individual mechanical changes - Token X moves to hex A3, Player Foo's health increases by 10, etc. Actions are grouped into events.

===Events===
An event is a thing that happened in the game. An event is a name plus a list of associated actions.

===Proposals===
A proposal is a suggested event (this is the main mechanic for GM/player interaction). Proposals have to be accepted by somebody; once they do, the event is created and takes effect. Proposals can be active or accepted or rejected.

==Decks==
Decks are collections of cards. When empty, they're refilled from one or more template decks (in some cases with adjustment, per the job encounter deck rarity thing as above).

===Tableau===
In some cases there's a face-up tableau of cards which the player can choose from instead of drawing directly from the deck. When cards from the tableau are drawn they are refilled from the deck. Cards in the tableau will age out after a certain number of turns. Cards in the tableau are partly visible to players - they're only fully visible when selected.

===Encounter Cards===
Encounter cards are the typical card. They consist of one or more checks, where each is with a particular skill against a particular difficulty with a particular reward and penalty.

===Other Cards===
Other cards don't have checks but offer choices between items, or just an event, or a single check that's not an encounter as such.

==Seasons==
A round of the game is called a season. The round consists of three phases. All players do a phase simultaneously, and don't advance to the next phase until everyone has finished.

===Play Phase===
In the play phase, the players have 20 turns to spend doing normal play (drawing and resolving cards, doing custom interactions, traveling, etc).

===Correspondence Phase===
In the correspondence phase, each player is given another player to write to. They give an update on what has happened this season (during the play phase), and pass on any rumors they have about upcoming events. In addition, there are two mechanical pieces. The player is given a change in their own circumstances (eg, a change in the rarity of various encounters), and must pick between a few fronts and advancing them in some way.

===GM Phase===
In the GM phase, players can make GM-level corrections to the mechanical state of the world (eg, move a character around, whatever). These are all proposals.

==Fronts==

Itinerant Royalty Errands/Engine

2020-12-31T21:31:44Z

Inky: /* Rounds */

==Overview==
Stuff about the game engine (excluding data).

==Map==
The map is a collection of hexes.

===Hexes===
A hex is a location on the map. A hex has coordinates, an associated region, an associated country, a terrain type, and an additional difficulty rating. Regions and countries are groupings of hexes.

===Terrain===
Terrain is what the hex is composed of. A terrain has name, some base danger rating, some base movement rating, and an encounter deck.

===Tokens===
Tokens are things tracked on the map (they can be players, NPCs, artifacts, small locations, etc). Tokens are located in a particular hex, carried by another token, or in limbo. Tokens can support zero or more custom interactions.

==Character==
Each player has a character in the game (NPCs are tracked as tokens or fronts). Characters have a job (they always have exactly one) and a level within that job and a rarity adjustment for the encounters in the job deck, a collection of stats (in particular, counters for each resource, health, royalty, plus data for their current job), a collection of skills (skills + xp total, which then gets mapped to a rank, probably 20/25/25/25/30), a collection of talents, and a collection of projects.

===Jobs===
Jobs have a name, a rank (used mostly for switching across job trees), zero or more promotion jobs, zero or more demotion jobs, a base encounter difficulty, an encounter deck. Jobs have a default encounter deck rarity (eg, 4xA, 2xB, 2xC, 1xE-H) but this can change for a particular character over time.

===Projects===
Projects are an ongoing thing the character is working on (building something, organizing something, researching something, searching for something). Projects have a name, approach type (this determines skills used for the project), xp, resources devoted (these two together determine rank), and a status (ongoing, completed, canceled).

==Actions==
Actions are individual mechanical changes - Token X moves to hex A3, Player Foo's health increases by 10, etc. Actions are grouped into events.

===Events===
An event is a thing that happened in the game. An event is a name plus a list of associated actions.

===Proposals===
A proposal is a suggested event (this is the main mechanic for GM/player interaction). Proposals have to be accepted by somebody; once they do, the event is created and takes effect. Proposals can be active or accepted or rejected.

==Decks==
Decks are collections of cards. When empty, they're refilled from one or more template decks (in some cases with adjustment, per the job encounter deck rarity thing as above).

===Tableau===
In some cases there's a face-up tableau of cards which the player can choose from instead of drawing directly from the deck. When cards from the tableau are drawn they are refilled from the deck. Cards in the tableau will age out after a certain number of turns. Cards in the tableau are partly visible to players - they're only fully visible when selected.

===Encounter Cards===
Encounter cards are the typical card. They consist of one or more checks, where each is with a particular skill against a particular difficulty with a particular reward and penalty.

===Other Cards===
Other cards don't have checks but offer choices between items, or just an event, or a single check that's not an encounter as such.

==Seasons==
A round of the game is called a season. The round consists of three phases. All players do a phase simultaneously, and don't advance to the next phase until everyone has finished.

===Play Phase===
In the play phase, the players have 20 turns to spend doing normal play (drawing and resolving cards, doing custom interactions, traveling, etc).

===Correspondence Phase===
In the correspondence phase, each player is given another player to write to. They give an update on what has happened this season (during the play phase), and pass on any rumors they have about upcoming events. In addition, there are two mechanical pieces. The player is given a change in their own circumstances (eg, a change in the rarity of various encounters), and must pick between a few fronts and advancing them in some way.

===GM Phase===
In the GM phase, players can make GM-level corrections to the mechanical state of the world (eg, move a character around, whatever). These are all proposals.

Itinerant Royalty Errands/Engine

2020-12-31T21:12:24Z

Inky:

Itinerant Royalty Errands/TODO

2020-12-31T17:12:13Z

Inky:

==Engine==
* Storage
** Read-only and writeable
** Some kind of key/value, with schema specifying types; types can include lists (for decks or inventory)
* Decks
* Jobs
* Player Characters
* Projects
* Proposals
* Events
* Actions
* Hexes
* Features
* Letters
* Fronts
* Resources
* Artifacts
* Significant NPCs
* Global Config
* Turn Transitions

==Data==
* Hexes
* Jobs
* Job Decks

==Client/Server/UI==
* Figure out UI components
* Figure out resumability/reloading
* Figure out accepting events

Itinerant Royalty Errands/Engine

2020-12-31T06:15:38Z

Inky:

Itinerant Royalty Errands/Engine

2020-12-31T04:56:32Z

Inky: /* Map */

Itinerant Royalty Errands

2020-05-30T20:26:48Z

Inky: /* Summary */

Itinerant Royalty Errands

2020-05-29T05:28:02Z

Inky: Created page with "==What?== cf https://joshg.itch.io/interstellar-errands ==Summary== * There's a hexmap with a half-dozen countries and different terrains * There's a pool of like 30 zodiac s..."

Itinerant Princes

2020-05-29T05:05:34Z

Inky:

See also [[Itinerant Princes Picaro]] and [[Itinerant Royalty Errands]].

==Overview==
Ok, so the pitch/big idea here is this is a mixed automated/PBP game. The players play wandering adventurers who travel the galaxy (I'm thinking this is set in the Agents of Empire universe, although it doesn't have to be) and they fall in with pirates, fight with mercenary bands, study under magicians, explore weird places, etc. That stuff is handled in a KoL-esque way, with a fixed number of daily turns that you spend doing stuff that is mostly resolved automatically. Mostly is important, though - it's possible for a player to call for GM judgement to do something outside the system (like "I know it says I have to lead my troops against the opponent, but I'm going to sneak in and assassinate their general instead") and then custom stuff can happen. It's also the case that the players do some contributory writing to the system. This comes in two parts - there are portions of the game that are basically "the role-playing part", like there might be a party the characters are at chatting to each other; and there are places where the player is asked to provide some writing (I'm not quite sure what form this comes in, but I think it might be like "you discover a treasure, what is it?") which then goes into a general pool for re-use. It's also possible the players might provide this writing for other players instead of for themselves.

==Characters and Setting==
The intent here is these are a bunch of, well, itinerant princes - they wander around and have adventures, and sometimes they bump into each other and have a big adventure and sometimes (mostly) they go off by themselves. They gain things and lose them, like they might be pirate captain for a while and then there's a big storm and they're shipwrecked and find themselves inducted into a weird cult and then the cult is crushed by some army and they're sold into slavery and they lead a slave revolt and seize the estate and then they play politics for a while and then ... Because of the perpetual gaining and losing, the characters can't be defined by their social class or job (eg, wealthy merchant), although since skills and affinities and so on are static there is an equivalent (eg, perpetual wheeler-dealer).

This implies the setting is small enough they can bump into each other occasionally but large enough they can get lost or imprisoned or whatever and other people can't necessarily find them. If it's the Agents of Empire setting, maybe it's a single solar system; if it's some Conan setting maybe it's some half-dozen nations; if it's steampunk maybe it's Western Europe.

Per other things the characters are all members of an extended family of some kind or otherwise members of the chosen few (genetic mutation, special birthmark, whatever) with some set of magic powers. The magic powers are good enough to help them out and let them meet up with each other and stuff, but it's usually not enough for them to tell someone else "hey, teleport me out of prison" unless it's a super emergency. I'm toying with a thing where they have some magical reserve they can expend which is refreshed at intervals (like at the solstice or whatever), so you can talk telepathically but it's kind of a big deal and you save it for emergencies.

==General Mechanics==
So the real question is what the players are trying for. Like, as a freelance mercenary they're probably looking for money; as the leader of a company they're looking to conquer some territory (?); as the owner of an estate they're looking for political power. Or whatever. None of this is xp as such, note - is there really no skill gain? That's generally an easy reward but it's hard to figure if it fits here. In books generally they're out for some overarching story purpose or they're stranded and trying to struggle out.

===Arenas===
...
===Rewards===
...

==Writing==
...

==Characters==
The intent here is these are a bunch of, well, itinerant princes - they wander around and have adventures, and sometimes they bump into each other and have a big adventure and sometimes (mostly) they go off by themselves. They gain things and lose them, like they might be pirate captain for a while and then there's a big storm and they're shipwrecked and find themselves inducted into a weird cult and then the cult is crushed by some army and they're sold into slavery and they lead a slave revolt and seize the estate and then they play politics for a while and then ... Because of the perpetual gaining and losing, the characters can't be defined by their social class or job (eg, wealthy merchant), although since skills and affinities and so on are static there is an equivalent (eg, perpetual wheeler-dealer).

I think per other things the characters are all members of an extended family of some kind or otherwise members of the chosen few with this set of magic powers: telepathy (with other group members) and teleportation (to other group members) for minimum, I guess.

==System and Tokens==
I think there's some trick here where different token sets will be active depending on what arena you're in, but the overall system stays the same. Like, if you're currently a mercenary captain, then you have skills like swordplay and spot ambush and command, and you have stats like health and fatigue and troop morale and training, whereas if you're a wizard then you have skills like decipher tome and hypnotic gaze and stats like willpower and corruption. But in either case maybe the deal is skills go 1-5 and you roll 2d6+skill and try to get whatever.

There's also going to be a cycle where you accumulate fractional bits which eventually assemble into larger things, some of which require GM judgement. Like maybe you get coins from fighting goblins, and 10 coins is a treasure, and when you appraise the treasure the GM tells you what you found.

==Oracles==
I feel like oracles are going to be important in this game, in the sense of "some random image or word provided to help generate some text". It's important to not have to write too much text in this game, or it'll become unmanageable to create, and yet it needs to be suggestive enough to be able to be seen repeatedly.

==Inspirations==
Nine Princes in Amber is a good touchstone here, I think - note that series allows the characters to talk to each other from wherever and even travel to each other if they want, but they spend a lot of time doing their own thing.

Freebooting Venus kicked this off most recently, although I dunno how similar they'll really end up being.