Sequel Musings -- Part 2: A New Paradigm (2025)

In the short intervening period since the previous post, a lot of spitballing and discussion has gone on, in the TNP Discord. Without belabouring the point too much, the combat mechanics have essentially been narrowed down to "keep 2d6," with the baseline assumption starting at rolling 3 dice; any two can be used as the attack roll (scoring a hit on a 10+) with the remaining dice used for damage.

So how does that hit-chance look, when a modifier is applied to it? (Calculated by using the highest 2 of 3d6):

• +0 = 35.65%
• +1 = 52.31%
• +2 = 68.06%
• +3 = 80.56%

From that, I would argue that we can eliminate +3 as an option for the combat math; the percentage is already too high, and the system needs to account for other bonuses. The basic idea would be that bonuses granted from class features, teamwork, etc. would add more d6s to the pool; much like TNP, extra dice not used for the attack roll would be used for extra damage -- and the attack roll would never exceed 2d6+mod.

For combat math, I think it's safe to assume that your highest modifier would always apply. It also means that on a "basic attack" the average damage roll (on a hit) would be the remainder of [2d6+2 - DC10]; if the average of 3d6 is 10.5, and at least an 8 needs to be added to the +2 in order to score a hit, that remainder ends up being 2.5 -- in which case, I would argue that it probably makes sense to also add this +2 modifier to the damage roll.

Now, moving away from combat, to the skills side of things...

If we use the TNP "skill grid" as our basis, we can rank skills by assigning a value to them, based on both their Attribute and their Skillset. If our assumption is that combat math is fueled by Attribute mods (which range from +0 to +2) then we have to shape our Skillset bonuses around that. That all being said, we don't need to give as much consideration to outside modifiers, the way that we would do with combat.

My first intuition was "Skillsets add ranks, and Attributes also add ranks," or in other words, neither adds a flat modifier, but both could add to the "d6 pool." The problem with this (as was brought to light in discussion) is that it amounts entirely to randomness, whereby you're just rolling more and more dice and hoping for some combination of 5s and 6s on two of those dice (or a 4 and a 6, obviously.) The upside is that even at "highest 2 of 6d6" the success rate is only just approaching 75% which also means that even by adding 4 additional dice to the baseline 3d6 roll, the math only then breaks the 80% mark. If the +3 modifier math was deemed too high for combat (because it reaches this 80% mark) then it stands to reason that a +2 cap for Attributes means a +1 cap for Skillsets, if these modifiers are meant to be potentially combined together. By letting one of these numbers be dice instead of a flat modifier, it gives us a bit more wiggle room for some variety. A +2 modifier added to "highest 2 of 5d6" (i.e. +2 dice to the pool) would cap out at just over 90% success rate -- which is basically the absolute ceiling of what I think would work, for skills. 

This also begs the question of, in a spread of 5 Attributes, how many +2s, +1s, and +0s should a character have? If you're able to overlap two +2 Attributes with a +2d6 bonus on two Skillsets, suddenly you're at that mathematical ceiling, for something like 1/3rd of the skills in the game. If skillfulness is meant to be spread across a party of 4 or 5, then this wouldn't make any sense. It probably stands to reason that a well-rounded party would have one character with a +2 for each of the 5 Attributes -- meaning an Attribute spread of something like +2/+1/+1/+0/+0 as the default. By extension, this would allow bonus dice from Skillsets to have a bit more flexibility, since we only need to worry about one Attribute's worth of skills ever approaching that 90% (and of those, probably/maybe only one out of 3-4 applicable, overlapping Skillsets.)

Anyway, that's a lot of talk about dice probabilities and math. The challenge once you find a dice engine that hums, is how to convert that into something that feels like the type of game you want to be playing. In essence, you back-port the mechanics onto the character classes as best you can, rather than starting from the character concept, and trying to make up mechanics that fit and work.

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As the blog schedule goes, the next post should be up on or about February 12th, so make sure to check back then!

Sequel Musings (2025)

Perhaps it shines through in some of the posts I've made about the TNP sequel before, but the designs (such as they are, thus far) don't really have me as excited as some of the breakthroughs I experienced when working on TNP. For example, I don't like how the 'first attempt' mechanics boil down to "sometimes you use this mod, sometimes that mod, and other times no mod." Broadly speaking, I think the weapon damage die mechanics don't carry the same pop that 'class dice' do in TNP (because these mechanics don't stack, unlike TNP) even though they're meant to behave similarly. The weapon damage dice feel like a compromise, particularly when the attack math is laid bare, and there ends up being no variance in the crit bonuses.

So I'm beginning to lean in a new(ish?) direction.

I've made a post in the past, offering and evaluating some alternative "DC10" mechanics. The suggestion that made the most sense (in the paradigm of the attribute ranges extrapolated from TNP / projected into the sequel design ideas) was basically 2d6+mod, where 'advantage' would be "3d6, keep the 2 highest" and 'disadvantage' would likewise be "3d6, keep the 2 lowest."

In addition to that, I've also teased other concepts I've had in mind, for other RPGs I might want to design -- with this one in particular jumping to mind:

an ultra-lite mechanical system, that fires off of d6s only (and maybe a standard deck of 52 cards) that can easily be played on a bus, or out on a camping trip

So why do I bring this up?
I'm sure I've posited this before, but if you're going to push forward with "d6 pool" as your 'unique selling proposition' (particularly if the decision is made to shed the 'weapon damage dice' mechanics) then the next question invariably is, why keep the d20?

I keep finding myself answering that question with a question: What do you replace the d20 with?

One of the mechanics that I had used in previous RPG designs was sort of... mixing and matching attack dice and damage dice, to create "power attack" or "precise attack" mechanics. So for example, if the attack roll was 1d10 and 1d6, and the damage roll was 2d6, a "precise attack" would let you use the two highest dice out of all 4 -- ensuring you a better chance to hit, at the cost of lowering your overall/average/maximum damage. Perhaps the d6 pool could be modified to perform this sort of function, as well?

Just spit-balling here, but lets say your default mechanic is to roll 5d6, and you can use up to 2 of them as your attack roll (probably adding an attribute modifier, or similar) with any remaining d6s used as your damage roll. In a way, this sort of brings back the tradeoffs that class dice bonuses have, where you're often using a die to score a hit (or a crit) at the expense of using that die for damage. To wit, you would be trying to compile the two lowest d6 rolls possible to hit that "DC10" mark, so that your higher rolls could be preserved for damage.

This ultimately begs the question of how the d6 pool is to be bounded. If at its core, the system is relying on "2d6+mod" in order for DC10 to be at all viable, then it stands to reason that the design might have to hand-hold players towards ensuring their main attack stat is at least a +2 (assuming that such stats are used for both number of dice in the pool, and for attack modifiers... which might be messy.) Then, situational and/or "power" bonuses can ping either flat numbers or secondary stats, in order to add more dice to the pool. And, if the assumption is that the d6 pool is both your attack and your base damage (because we're not using weapon damage dice) then your floor actually needs to be +3 / 3d6 in order for this to work. That all being said, a straight 2d6+3 vs. a DC10 isn't significantly better odds than 1d20 vs. DC10 -- with the added downside that +3 is already near the ceiling of where TNP designs would imply that attribute modifiers ought to be.

Maybe you just say "screw it" and make it so that the default roll is 3d6, with any modifiers being over and above that? In that paradigm, a +2 mod might give you 5 dice total, with your attack roll being (effectively) 2d6+2, with 3d6 remaining for damage. Something about that feels "off" though, to me. Heck, maybe the attack roll needs be changed to 1d6 and the DC changed from 10 down to 5?

Anyways, I think there's something to this, but I haven't quite hit the nail on the head just yet. I already feel as though marrying the 2d6+mod ethos to the "d6 pool" idea has more going for it than... "weapon damage dice, but also d6 pool, but also d20." I'll have to give it some more thought to try and clean this up (and admittedly, I don't really know how to calculate for this type of dice-rolling, since it isn't a simple "keep the highest" or "keep the lowest" sort of rule -- so I'll have to dig deeper into that, too.)

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Hopefully that was an enlightening post, for everyone.
Next entry is due up on January 31st, so check back then!

Getting Playtest Ready (2025)

We're back!
As denizens of the TNP Discord will know, one of the main things I had been putting thought into over the break is the random campaign generation mechanic. I narrowed down a few of the specifics, and finally put it all into writing, so that I could distribute it for critique and feedback. Overall, I'm very optimistic about this system, based on the responses I got. There are only a few minor adjustments/clarifications that need to be implemented, after which I would say that this subsystem is "playtest-ready."

The basics of it are as such:

1. There are 4 basic types of encounters: combat, exploration, social, and subterfuge
2. A number of encounters are planned for each level, starting with 4 at level 0, and increasing by two every level (to a maximum of 5th)
3. A campaign thus consists of 54 encounters, approximately half of which should be combat encounters; these encounters can all be curated entirely by the DM, or by using a deck of cards to quickly generate a randomized campaign.
4. Face cards, jokers, and clubs are all used as combat encounters; aces are considered "wild" but are recommended to also be used as combat encounters; the numbered cards of the other 3 suits are used to generate (non-combat) encounters of the other 3 types.
5. The party can win the campaign, if they successfully complete a majority of their encounters.

This is something that I feel TTRPGs need -- a definitive ending point, and a way to track progress and success. Ever since it was pointed out to me that the number of cards in a deck (52, plus 2 jokers) corresponds to the number of weeks in a year (and that there are 4 suits, just as there are 4 seasons) I've wanted to bake this sort of correlation into how the random campaign generation was constituted. Clubs being a weapon made me want to associate that with combat; hearts representing social interaction seems intuitive, and exploration being about finding treasure would map to diamonds as a suit. Spades end up being "black ops," I suppose.

Since the numbers and types of monsters that can be generated in a combat encounter have a prescribed formula, starting from a randomly generated series of encounters, the monsters can be thrown into action fairly quickly. This formula will need to be incorporated into the campaign generation documentation, since currently I have it bolted onto the monster mechanics documentation. As mentioned before, some of the keywords and their related mechanics need to be finalized, in order to fully flesh out the archenemy mechanics. But after that? The campaign generation and monster mechanics will be basically complete.

The only remaining tasks then, in terms of completing the DM-side documentation, would be finalizing the non-combat encounter mechanics -- which should involve incorporating the detailed description of skill usage, as laid out previously. After that, I feel at least some "sample" monsters should be put out into the wild for mass consumption, but hopefully playtesting can begin as soon as it becomes convenient to do so.

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Look forward to all of that (and more) coming this year!

As mentioned before (and on the Discord) sequel content will also show up on the blog, as well as any "TNP 1.1" developments -- or possibly even some new ideas in game design, should they arise.

Check back for the next post on January 21st!