Noodling/Resolution RPG
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)
- Gameplay 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 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.
Combat Granularity
Most combat is too small a granularity - maybe things should be resolved in three rounds or so.
