Design Origins -- Part 2: Class Dice

Continuing on from where "Part 1" left off, today I'm going to talk about something I consider to be the defining characteristic of The Next Project: Class Dice.


The Previous Project
As I touched on last time, to a greater or lesser extent, TNP evolved out of the previous RPG that I had written. That system was defined by using only the d6 and d10, for all of its mechanics. In discussion and in playtesting, people found it unintuitive; it essentially functioned as a d20-style system, but with 1d6+1d10 as your "action" die. The main "selling point" of this particular dice gimmick simply wasn't compelling enough.

The game also suffered from being more of a "point-buy" style of character assembly, with only the thinnest of fantasy trappings applied. Players sort of had to take the jumble of mechanics and create their own "skin" for what sort of character their "class" was supposed to be. The game just failed to click with people, on an emotional or psychological level.


Paradigm Shift
So for my next project, I knew that I wanted to do something more recognizable -- something class-based. I had also basically settled on using the d20 for the "action" die; whenever you make an attack or a skill check, just roll the d20. You may need to modify it, after making the roll (i.e. by adding static modifiers or additional dice to the roll, or rerolling using Advantage/Disadvantage) but I knew I wanted something straightforward, and easier to tinker with than 1d6+1d10 had been.

However, I still wanted to retain some of the sense of "these two dice are all you need" that the previous game had brought to the table. Somewhere in an internet discussion about purchasing extra dice, it was pointed out that buying the sets of polyhedral dice (with 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, the "percentile" dice, and 1d12) was sort of a waste, since the d4 and d12 are so rarely used, particularly prior to 5th Edition coming out (which was when this discussion took place.)

That was where my mind sort of made a connection.

Instead of having the entire system function around the same two dice, use the d20 for the core mechanics, and the other die-shapes for the class mechanics.

This was something I really liked, from a tactile perspective: a table of players with just one or two sets of polyhedral dice could/should be able to play an entire party of characters. The idea of using dice rolls for bonuses was also something I liked from 5th Edition, as I wanted to remove any redundant or fiddly modifiers.


Credit where credit is due
Games such as Dungeon World and 13th Age sort of influenced this design ethos, with the former using damage dice as a class-based mechanic, and the latter having the combination of class and weapon "group" determine the damage die to use -- Rogues do better damage with daggers and shortswords, whereas Fighters get the most out of a greatsword or greataxe.

The idea, then, was to figure out which classes each of the dice would represent.


The Original Slate
As mentioned in the last post, from the outset, the first slate of 5 classes was probably going to include some combination of these classes:

• Bard
• Rogue
• Barbarian
• Ranger
• Fighter
• Monk
• Paladin

In 4th Edition D&D, the numerical stats for classes are generally just reverse-engineered from the baselines established within the mathematical framework -- there's nothing really flavourful about them. So I went back to D&D 3.5 for inspiration.

If you think of a Wizard in 3.5, they have a d4 for their hit die, they generally will have a dagger or darts for their backup weapons (using d4 for damage) and one of their iconic spells is Magic Missile (also using d4 for damage.)

Similarly, when you think back to Rogues, one of their iconic abilities is the stacking of d6s for sneak attack damage -- conveniently, they also used d6 for their hit die, in 3.5! The same kind of thinking went into the Ranger (d8 hit die, d8 weapons such as longswords and longbows) as well as the Paladin (d10) and the Barbarian (d12)

I wanted this first slate to be as quintessential as possible, which is why I went with the 5 classes I did: Mage, Rogue, Ranger, Paladin, Barbarian.


Growing the Roster
A similar process was undertaken when designing additional classes, in order to expand to a 2nd and 3rd slate. In some cases d4 and d6 were used to mimic the d8 and d12, giving those dice some additional design space to muddle in:
 - Monk was designed as a "1d4" class, with the Archer as a "2d4" class (and later the two would start to blend together, in the Acrobat.)
 - As a class that would gain HP by shapeshifting, it made sense to slot Druid in at a d4, adding one extra die to its HP in "cat" form, and double that for "bear" form.
 - When the Fighter finally became a d6 class, it was so that it could simulate both dual wielding (shortswords,) archery (shortbow,) or two-handed weapons (greatsword,) to showcase it as the "weapon master" style of class. Doubling the d6 for their HP helps to slot them into the frontline "warrior" space.

Having a Warlock (with a d10 Eldritch Blast as its iconic ability) also helped push me towards mixing things up a bit, instead of having every d10 class be melee-focused. Conversely, the need for a "heavy mage" made d12 the obvious slot for the Spellbinder.


From there, most other classes just sort of fell into place, to flesh out the three slates:

• Warlord as the "heavy martial" made for a nice d12 class, for the 2nd slate
• a fireballing Sorcerer for d6 -- almost a no-brainer
• Bard and Cleric at d8 (as the support classes) seemed the right fit for dabbling in both melee and ranged combat, without being the strongest at either.
• Adventurer as a two-weapon, melee fighter made sense for d10
• Guardian with a "2d6" melee subclass (Warden) and a "1d6" caster subclass (Shaman) seemed the right fit

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Next Post

Check back April 4th for the next update; hopefully by then, I will have at least a playtest-ready version of the rules document compiled, to share.

Skill Difficulties (2018)

In the previous post on this topic (for Beta 4) I covered most of the fundamentals about how skill usage should be handled, in The Next Project; it's probably worth re-reading before diving into this post. Today I want to expand on that, get into the skill math a little bit deeper, and also touch on "free-form" skill use vs. more structured "skill challenges."

We've already set up the parameters of "when not to roll" -- if a course of action is either trivially easy, or impossible -- but perhaps that needs to be expanded on a bit, with some more crunch applied. Specifically, this means that if/when the DM is going to ask for a roll, there is going to be a chance of failure. So what does that mean in numerical terms?


Math behind the Madness

The 'Beta 4' post established the different degrees of competency that characters can have with each skill; with our universal difficulty (or "DC") of 10, this gives us the following success rates (including critical successes):

1. untrained: 55%
2. expertise: 60%
3. trained: 72.5%
4. trained+expertise: 81.666...%

What this means is that at the highest competency level, the failure rate caps out just below 20%, with the DM having the discretion to further reduce that to zero -- if they declare that a course of action simply succeeds without needing to roll.

Meaningful Results

If we look at the numbers when allowing multiple rolls at the highest competency level, the chance of failure almost immediately starts to approach zero (which, if that is the desired result, then the established rule for "trivially easy" actions should have been invoked.) So while it has always been enforced in my playtests, I'm not sure this has ever been explicitly written into the rules: the party should not be allowed to attempt the same skill check more than once, to overcome the same obstacle. If they are required to roll, it is because the DM wants there to be a chance of failure, and if failure is the result, then the party must attempt a different course of action, in order to proceed.

The example of this from the previous post would be "picking a lock" vs. "breaking a door down" -- if one doesn't work, the party can try the other (or they must simply choose an alternate path.) But the effect of the failure is that the approach must be changed, instead of just rolling the same approach until it succeeds.

Another tool we can put at the disposal of the DM borrows from 4th Edition D&D's skill challenges; a failure can mean a change in approach, or a loss of resources. In some cases, it might be appropriate to allow a failed course of action to succeed, if the player is willing to sacrifice one of their reserves to do so.

Structure vs. Restriction

If only one attempt can be made at each skill check, it also incentivizes party members to diversify their skill selections, across the group; each character should have their own area of specialization, and should only really overlap in case the party gets split up. With all of this in place, we can see how the system helps to facilitate teamwork and "sharing the spotlight" a little bit. The question then becomes whether this needs to be formalized mechanically, even further.

The way skill challenges worked in 4th Edition, it was essentially turn-based; you went "around the table" and everyone took a turn making a skill check of some sort. This, however, is counter to the best practices that came out of actual play experience, with the system. My own anecdotes line up with the advice that "the best skill challenges are the ones the players don't know they're in." 

The best way to achieve this is to put the party in a non-combat scenario with multiple different leads or threads that can be followed, and then ask them which ones they choose to pursue, and how. Giving everyone a chance to act and to have their share of the spotlight is important (as it always should be in gaming) but "gamifying" it into turns can sometimes get in the way of the scene evolving organically, or "the action flowing from the fiction."

Turn-based skill challenges should be a tool in the DM's kit, but one that is used sparingly. All characters in TNP are designed to be able to meaningfully contribute in any encounter; there should be no "risk aversion" on the part of the players, in non-combat encounters. If this is a problem that a DM consistently runs into with their group, then instituting a round/turn structure can be used to help cajole people into putting themselves out there a bit more.

Keeping Score

The next question when examining skill challenges is how you measure success -- and I'll just come right out and say, that I think this comes down to taste.

If a non-combat scene requires the party to amass a certain number of clues, the DM can weigh the numbers of successes and failures it took to get them all, and decide (based on that) whether to award XP or not -- perhaps even going so far as to penalize reserves for particularly unsuccessful outings.

Alternatively (if appropriate to the scene) failure at a skill challenge can end in combat (resulting in a similar expenditure of reserves) albeit with the express understanding that whatever knowledge there was to be gleaned from the skill challenge will be given to the players, at the end of the fight. In any case, the over-arching plot still needs to be advanced, regardless of the outcome.

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Next post

Work has been going on behind the scenes on compiling the new draft of the rules, but there haven't been any real revelations from that process -- it's just the usual, expected grind.

As always, check back in 10 days for the next update. If you have any questions or requests for blog content going forward, leave a comment below, or get ahold of me wherever you get your TNP links from.

Knowledge is Power! (2018)

One of the things I've been fiddling with recently is how knowledge skills will be given out, and I've come to some conclusions that will be implemented for the new draft. Despite being more "flavour" than mechanics, this has always been something I've wanted to get just right, probably agonizing over it more than was really warranted. But I feel like I've got it whittled down to a sharp point, now.


Origins

I mentioned in my last post that at one point, "Knowledge" was treated as a Skillset -- essentially, a grouping of skills -- meaning that you could either be good at all of them, or at individual skills, based on whether or not you were good at the attribute related to that specific skill. This presented problems, and eventually knowledge skills were migrated away from being a skillset, to being tied to Power Sources. The intent here was to give additional design weight to Power Sources, beyond just their function for re-specs.


Next Steps

Initially, each Power Source was assigned 3 knowledge skills; if you had that Power Source, you had training with all 3 skills. Since there are only 10 knowledge skills in the designs, this meant that some of the Power Sources overlapped. This lead to some classes (assuming two power sources for each class) would end up with 6 trained knowledge skills, and others would end up with 5.

The main thing I didn't like about this setup (probably) was that it didn't mirror other skills in terms of math, i.e. those skills could have both training and expertise. With the plan to implement leveling also coming into focus, it seemed like a good idea to have knowledge skills be a part of that progression.


Present Day

So the idea going into the 2018 Edition (at the start) was to narrow the skills of each power source from 3 down to 2, and then, grant training to one of those skills, and expertise with the other (at the player's choosing.) Over and above this idea, was the plan to allow a separate progression track for all characters: each time you gained a level, you would also gain training with a new knowledge skill, or expertise with a trained knowledge skill.

The problem with this is twofold. First, "Knowledge" as its own separate progression becomes messy, if it is intended that the upgrades it provides can also be applied to skills gained from power sources -- specifically, it causes problems if a power source is changed, as part of changing your class. The two methods of gaining/improving knowledge skills needed to be untangled from each other. Secondly, it still ended up giving out too many trained skills, meaning that party members would be stepping on each others' toes; gaining one trained skill per power source, plus up to 5 more as you gained levels (from a list of only 10, to start with) just didn't make sense. Even at two power sources per class, this would be too much, and I already knew that I was going to have a handful of classes be able to get three.


Moving Forward

After much deliberation, the solution I have come to is this:

Each power source is associated with two knowledge skills.
When you gain a power source, you gain one of the following benefits with those skills:

• Training with both skills

• Training with one of the skills, and expertise with both

The decision to remove "knowledge progression" as a tool for precise customization was kind of a tough one, but I feel it is in line with the game's premise -- that The Next Project should be more of a "pick-up-and-play" gaming experience, than be about character creation and crunch. This setup allows for knowledge skills to function like other skills (mathematically) while also helping to reign in the number of skills each character will have. It will also allow two characters with the same power source to still have differences in their skill loadouts.


Backup Power

All that being said, I kind of what to utilize the system that was suggested previously, as sort of a backup/catch-all/fail-safe kind of measure. Specifically, if a situation reasonably calls for a knowledge check, but doesn't map to a specific skill, the players can fall back on their Power Sources. If the DM feels a PC's power source is applicable, the knowledge check can be made as a trained check; if more than one power source would apply, the check could also be made with expertise. As mentioned before, this is fairly similar to  the 13th Age system for Backgrounds, but a little more narrowly-focused.


Next Post

Hopefully I'll be able to get some more writing/designing done, before the next post is due to go up. I am always taking requests for blog topics, so send me your ideas!
Check back March 13th.