While I've discussed randomness before, I've been thinking about it a little more now that I just had my first peek at the influence actions from Toulouse. It seems that, by and large, the number of options in the rules currently provides some measure of uncertainty. There were many watch or follow actions which didn't turn up a lot of results because people watched for the wrong thing or didn't put 2 levels into the actions so a single level of stealth was able to conceal things.
Some other rules for these types of games ditch the watch-follow-trace line and just have one generic watch, and if you beat the stealth by 2 whole points, you learn who was behind the action. I like the simplicity there, but it makes massive watch actions hella powerful: you'd basically know everything happening in the influence at the cost of not having much ability to do anything that turn. There's something I still like about the watch-follow-trace sort of stuff because as soon as you reveal one plan to your "allies" they might have enough information to watch for your action and trace it back to you, but also that you need to guess what your opponents' reactions will be.
When it comes to Attack, however, I feel like a little more randomness might be warranted. As it stands, in order to attack a level 3 influence, you need 4 levels in the attack. If that level 3 influence also has a level of defense, then you need 5 levels to successfully attack it. If a background like Domain Security might give a free bit of defence, attacks become very difficulty. And to attack that level 5 influence..? It could be virtually impossible. Obviously augments from disciplines, backgrounds, and abilities add a bit of randomness to the system, but this is clearly a little clunky.
Since we may soon have a totally awesome website that will do this math for me, I've been debating adding a bit more randomness into the system. Each level of the Attack action could provide 2 dice (difficulty 6, so it's a coin toss) into an attack pool, and each level of the influence or the defend action could provide a die of defence. So an attack 5 would be 10 dice and a level 5 influence with 5 levels of defence would be 10 dice and it comes down to pure chance. Is this too much though? Other options include banking attack points, or having a failed attack still temporarily reduce your pool for the next turn...
One thing I did like from some adaptations of the Dark Epics system is that small influences gain a bonus to concealment and possibly defence. This is because small influences are still nimble compared to larger ones, so I'm thinking of giving actions in a level 1 or 0 influence a free die of stealth and the influence as a whole a free die of conceal (difficulty 7? 5?). It isn't a guarantee, but these small actions–when you have little or no influence–are less likely to be noticed unless someone is really looking for all the little things. I'm not sure about a similar defence bonus, but I can see the argument for the smallest influences sometimes being a little more resilient. It would mean it is possibly a little harder to simply stomp someone's influence out completely. This is the sort of thing that might be easy to implement with a nicer website, but a pain to do by hand.
It also looks like, more or less, in Toulouse, some actions which were story-based were occasionally converted to the nearest influence action such as a story-investigate turning into a watch. Failed story actions which needed more points were notified, but it might be nice if a failed action one turn gave you a 1 point bonus or something on the next turn. That might be a lot to track though.
Some other rules for these types of games ditch the watch-follow-trace line and just have one generic watch, and if you beat the stealth by 2 whole points, you learn who was behind the action. I like the simplicity there, but it makes massive watch actions hella powerful: you'd basically know everything happening in the influence at the cost of not having much ability to do anything that turn. There's something I still like about the watch-follow-trace sort of stuff because as soon as you reveal one plan to your "allies" they might have enough information to watch for your action and trace it back to you, but also that you need to guess what your opponents' reactions will be.
When it comes to Attack, however, I feel like a little more randomness might be warranted. As it stands, in order to attack a level 3 influence, you need 4 levels in the attack. If that level 3 influence also has a level of defense, then you need 5 levels to successfully attack it. If a background like Domain Security might give a free bit of defence, attacks become very difficulty. And to attack that level 5 influence..? It could be virtually impossible. Obviously augments from disciplines, backgrounds, and abilities add a bit of randomness to the system, but this is clearly a little clunky.
Since we may soon have a totally awesome website that will do this math for me, I've been debating adding a bit more randomness into the system. Each level of the Attack action could provide 2 dice (difficulty 6, so it's a coin toss) into an attack pool, and each level of the influence or the defend action could provide a die of defence. So an attack 5 would be 10 dice and a level 5 influence with 5 levels of defence would be 10 dice and it comes down to pure chance. Is this too much though? Other options include banking attack points, or having a failed attack still temporarily reduce your pool for the next turn...
One thing I did like from some adaptations of the Dark Epics system is that small influences gain a bonus to concealment and possibly defence. This is because small influences are still nimble compared to larger ones, so I'm thinking of giving actions in a level 1 or 0 influence a free die of stealth and the influence as a whole a free die of conceal (difficulty 7? 5?). It isn't a guarantee, but these small actions–when you have little or no influence–are less likely to be noticed unless someone is really looking for all the little things. I'm not sure about a similar defence bonus, but I can see the argument for the smallest influences sometimes being a little more resilient. It would mean it is possibly a little harder to simply stomp someone's influence out completely. This is the sort of thing that might be easy to implement with a nicer website, but a pain to do by hand.
It also looks like, more or less, in Toulouse, some actions which were story-based were occasionally converted to the nearest influence action such as a story-investigate turning into a watch. Failed story actions which needed more points were notified, but it might be nice if a failed action one turn gave you a 1 point bonus or something on the next turn. That might be a lot to track though.
I don't think you should give an extra point if you fail an action. Not everything in life, or death, works out, so you shouldn't be rewarded if you fail.
ReplyDeleteFair enough. Even if a bonus level was restricted to the Attack action rather than trying to obtain information, someone is likely to defend themselves ASAP and make it irrelevant.
DeleteI am thinking that if an story action fails because you didn't have enough points in it, one might learn how much effort is at least needed for next time.
I like the idea of lower level influences being harder to detect, but you could also do the opposite and allow higher level influence to be easier. If someone has a four in Trade and basically controls the port in town, there should be a way to create the connections necessity to trace that influence without necessarily witnessing the influence in action. You could modify the trace action to allow someone to trace a 4 or 5 level influence in a category, maybe making them bank points to 2 or 3 times the influence level.
ReplyDeleteHmm, yes. That actually might be a better modification for Gauge, it could count as a point of contact to let you trace whoever is has the most influence. And Gauge could be countered by Conceal too. It would be a bit of a king-of-the-hill mechanic, where the leader is easier to spot.
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