Contests, Opposed Rolls, and Tasks -- Feedback, Please?

[zot]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

I take your point, but why would a Wizard haggle when he has magic! 😊😊

OK, smart guy, but my point is to make the game more fun for social characters and give them some dice rolling love when the combats aren't on (and blending role playing into it as well)...

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by zot

OK, smart guy, but my point is to make the game more fun for social characters and give them some dice rolling love when the combats aren't on (and blending role playing into it as well)...

I think your system is fine, and like I say, I'm sure many of us have been doing this sort of thing anyway. Looking at your steps, the only thing I would change is step 1:



"1. Tell each other your modifiers* and determine the number of dice** you will each roll
2. Roll the dice, checking for critical success / failure, and adjust by your opponent’s modifier
3.Compare results, the side with the lower result wins (if the results are the same, it’s a tie)
4.Players role play their results"

I think the first step should be, "players say exactly what their characters are trying to do." Then your other steps in order.

[zot]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

I think your system is fine, and like I say, I'm sure many of us have been doing this sort of thing anyway. Looking at your steps, the only thing I would change is step 1:



"1. Tell each other your modifiers* and determine the number of dice** you will each roll
2. Roll the dice, checking for critical success / failure, and adjust by your opponent’s modifier
3.Compare results, the side with the lower result wins (if the results are the same, it’s a tie)
4.Players role play their results"

I think the first step should be, "players say exactly what their characters are trying to do." Then your other steps in order.

Excellent point, that's actually what we do in practice (in that other system).

[Steve Jackson]

We absolutely need to add a mechanic to do this - thanks for raising the issue, zot. GURPS has a mechanic, but I don't want to import it wholesale.

Here is an attempt to write a VERY simple mechanic. You will note zot's influence in the example in the last paragraph :)

---

There will be situations where two players, or a player and an NPC, are in a “contest.” This might be a literal contest, like arm-wrestling, or a metaphorical one.

Each figure rolls dice – normally 3 dice against the relevant stat, but see below. The winner is the one who makes their roll by the greatest amount. In case of a tie, the GM provides a bit of narration: “The two of you strain, but neither of you budges a bit.” Then roll again.

Appropriate talents, as judged by the GM, could let you roll on fewer dice, but to keep things interesting, no one should roll fewer than two dice.

The two sides also don’t have to roll against the same stat. To hold onto a greased pig, you might roll your ST versus the pig’s DX.

The GM can use this mechanic in other ways:
• Multi-player contests (who gets a thrown dagger closest to the mark?)
• Multi-round contests, where you have to be ahead by two or more victories to settle the matter (a race through an obstacle course).
• “Player vs. world” contests (can your speech sway the crowd? Roll your IQ, modified by appropriate talents, against the crowd’s average IQ of 10).

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

We absolutely need to add a mechanic to do this - thanks for raising the issue, zot. GURPS has a mechanic, but I don't want to import it wholesale.

Here is an attempt to write a VERY simple mechanic. You will note zot's influence in the example in the last paragraph :)

---

There will be situations where two players, or a player and an NPC, are in a “contest.” This might be a literal contest, like arm-wrestling, or a metaphorical one.

Each figure rolls dice – normally 3 dice against the relevant stat, but see below. The winner is the one who makes their roll by the greatest amount. In case of a tie, the GM provides a bit of narration: “The two of you strain, but neither of you budges a bit.” Then roll again.

Appropriate talents, as judged by the GM, could let you roll on fewer dice, but to keep things interesting, no one should roll fewer than two dice.

The two sides also don’t have to roll against the same stat. To hold onto a greased pig, you might roll your ST versus the pig’s DX.

The GM can use this mechanic in other ways:
• Multi-player contests (who gets a thrown dagger closest to the mark?)
• Multi-round contests, where you have to be ahead by two or more victories to settle the matter (a race through an obstacle course).
• “Player vs. world” contests (can your speech sway the crowd? Roll your IQ, modified by appropriate talents, against the crowd’s average IQ of 10).

I like that; it's simple and pretty intuitive. You could even use it for Combat 😜 (Perhaps as an "optional rule?")

[zot]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

We absolutely need to add a mechanic to do this - thanks for raising the issue, zot. GURPS has a mechanic, but I don't want to import it wholesale.

Here is an attempt to write a VERY simple mechanic. You will note zot's influence in the example in the last paragraph :)

---

There will be situations where two players, or a player and an NPC, are in a “contest.” This might be a literal contest, like arm-wrestling, or a metaphorical one.

Each figure rolls dice – normally 3 dice against the relevant stat, but see below. The winner is the one who makes their roll by the greatest amount. In case of a tie, the GM provides a bit of narration: “The two of you strain, but neither of you budges a bit.” Then roll again.

Appropriate talents, as judged by the GM, could let you roll on fewer dice, but to keep things interesting, no one should roll fewer than two dice.

The two sides also don’t have to roll against the same stat. To hold onto a greased pig, you might roll your ST versus the pig’s DX.

The GM can use this mechanic in other ways:
• Multi-player contests (who gets a thrown dagger closest to the mark?)
• Multi-round contests, where you have to be ahead by two or more victories to settle the matter (a race through an obstacle course).
• “Player vs. world” contests (can your speech sway the crowd? Roll your IQ, modified by appropriate talents, against the crowd’s average IQ of 10).

Besides the absence of contests, the main thing I've been concerned about is IQ being king in matters of influence. IQ certainly matters when it comes to swaying a crowd but I'd hate to see social grace dominated by wizards because they have the highest IQs. I think everyone has encountered incredibly smart people who are abrasive, socially clumsy, or boring in their expression.

I'd really like an additional kind of roll that uses talents and circumstances as the basis instead of attributes. I think this is super important in matters of influence where it can get down to who you know, how much dirt you have on someone, the shrewdness you have acquired through hard dealings, allies you have cultivated, etc. I think talents can represent all of these things very well and attributes, well... don't.

[Jackal]

Zot -

First, yes, your rules are clear apart from the Step 1. clarification noted, above.

Question: Does your system remove player agency?

In other words, players want to feel like their actions (as opposed to their rolls) have meaning and affect the world. Role playing is the primary action in an RPG, so players want and expect it to work: they want to accomplish their goals by RPing a solution.

With opposed roles, have you taken that from them?

- Jack

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

That would be one solution but would involve more dice rolling. The way I dealt with it was to compare the two Attributes to arrive at a required success score.

Situation 1. [...]

It's obvious looking at these examples that in a contest Attributes should be compared in some way and not absolute.

What I did was create a table where equal attributes were at 50% success (10 on 3d6). A one point difference was +1 for attacker, a two point difference was -1 for defender, etc. So in Situation 2 above where there is a 4 point difference, Fighter A would be at 8 DEX (-2) and Fighter C would be at 12 DEX (+2).

I suppose there might be problems in larger combats with multiple engagements and I can't claim to have playtested it thoroughly but it seems to make logical sense.

Apologies for hijacking the thread!

I think this is a great way of looking at this, and seems to me it should be in its own thread!

[zot]

Originally Posted by Jackal

Zot -

First, yes, your rules are clear apart from the Step 1. clarification noted, above.

Question: Does your system remove player agency?

In other words, players want to feel like their actions (as opposed to their rolls) have meaning and affect the world. Role playing is the primary action in an RPG, so players want and expect it to work: they want to accomplish their goals by RPing a solution.

With opposed roles, have you taken that from them?

- Jack

That's a good question. In my experience, it doesn't remove player agency, it strengthens it. I've been using this technique since around 2009, give or take, and I usually run super narrative games: Fate, PDQ, Universalis, and my own collaborative system where all of the players trade off GMing and the current GM doesn't get to control other players' NPCs (or even prompt them about what they should do). I like lots of RPGs though, not just "super narrative" ones.

We don't use the contest framework as a substitute for role playing; it doesn't come into play all the time. Usually what happens is that I, as a GM, notice that a player is trying to get an NPC to do something and it isn't working -- maybe because their argument is terribly unconvincing. This is one situation in which players can get more agency because maybe the character is better at making a convincing argument than the player is.

In a situation like that, the technique can help the player try to achieve their goal. I ask the player what their goal is, or maybe the player initiates it. We run a quick contest to work out whether their character can convince the NPC, succeed in getting past the bureaucrat, get the chef to divulge the secret ingredient, etc. They get to have their character do the convincing that they weren't able to before and we role play what happens along the way.

This technique gives the players game mechanics they can use to accomplish things socially in-game when their own social skills are failing them (or maybe it's the GM's social skills that are failing). The dice and the rules are an impartial way to resolve these problems and, most importantly, we all have a lot of fun with it. Even failures are a lot of fun! When a player blows a roll in a dramatic courtroom argument, they enjoy coming up with what their character said that caused such a bad reaction and it entertains the other players too.

Using this, we don't end up with players with bruised feelings, feeling like they couldn't express what they were trying to do well enough to satisfy the GM or like the GM was just being stubborn and didn't like the player's idea.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

We absolutely need to add a mechanic to do this - thanks for raising the issue, zot. GURPS has a mechanic, but I don't want to import it wholesale.

Here is an attempt to write a VERY simple mechanic. You will note zot's influence in the example in the last paragraph :)

---

There will be situations where two players, or a player and an NPC, are in a “contest.” This might be a literal contest, like arm-wrestling, or a metaphorical one.

Each figure rolls dice – normally 3 dice against the relevant stat, but see below. The winner is the one who makes their roll by the greatest amount. In case of a tie, the GM provides a bit of narration: “The two of you strain, but neither of you budges a bit.” Then roll again.

Appropriate talents, as judged by the GM, could let you roll on fewer dice, but to keep things interesting, no one should roll fewer than two dice.

The two sides also don’t have to roll against the same stat. To hold onto a greased pig, you might roll your ST versus the pig’s DX.

The GM can use this mechanic in other ways:
• Multi-player contests (who gets a thrown dagger closest to the mark?)
• Multi-round contests, where you have to be ahead by two or more victories to settle the matter (a race through an obstacle course).
• “Player vs. world” contests (can your speech sway the crowd? Roll your IQ, modified by appropriate talents, against the crowd’s average IQ of 10).

I like this, but can you give an example of how it would be used in a social contest -- say, between someone with an IQ of 18, and someone with an IQ of 10 who has Sex Appeal and Charisma? I'm having some trouble wrapping my head around how you would adjust something like that...