| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Game Mechanics

Page history last edited by 1nfinite zer0 8 years, 3 months ago

Game mechanics refer to the rules and agreements between players that foster play and story advancement.

 

The basic goal of the game is to collectively create adventures and stories to explore this utopian yet challenging world.  The rules of the game exist to encourage story advancement that is fair and fun.  Be co-operative, reasonable, responsible and creative and you will flourish.

 

For a full understanding of how to play, please read the points below and follow through the sections.  If you want to play right away you can read Quickstart Guide and then goto the Adventures portal, later you can refer to the Mechanics guide for specific topics.

 

ow to play;

         Section 0: Basic story rules


 

0.0 a non-rule, and just how we communicate

Write what happens, To you or something around you.  You can describe your surroundings, what your character is thinking, what you are doing, and what others are doing.

 

0.1 Basic permissive mechanic

               Any character can perform a reasonable action provided that:

               a) it advances the story in some way

               b) the rest of the players agree it's plausible

 

 

0.1.1: You have absolute say over your actions, but cannot puppeteer others unreasonably. 

 

This is further detailed as the 'Basic permissive mechanic' below.  But here is an example:

Reasonable: Inertial, suitable, fitted, appropriate, engaging, balanced

e.g. You are in a market place, and have bartering level 3.  You see an item you want from someone who is selling things and you manage to negotiate down the price.

Unreasonable: The improbable, risky, chancey, daring, foolish, ignorant

e.g. You are an ordinary citizen, and you are in a busy market where everyone is pre-occupied with their shopping, when a huge intimidating thief grabs your change purse and shoves you onto the ground and starts to run away.  You cannot narrate yelling "stop thief" and have a warrior out of the crowd to thoroughly smash the thief and return your possessions.  It could happen, but is less likely than narrating something that YOU can do.

 

Reasonability is decided by table agreement. If anyone objects, they should immediately say so, and bid a number of points to make it happen. Counter-bids are subtracted from this. Any players may enter a bid, saying for which side, and then raise or hold till passed.

 

0.1.2: You can make things that are less likely to happen by making dice rolls.

 

So, for the thief example above, you decide to take things into your own hands.  You have a slingshot, and are level 2 at using it.  You try to hit the thief in the head with the slingshot, through the crowd it is a very difficult shot.  But, the dice are with you and you roll all successes, so the thief gets hit, goes down, and you can run up to catch him.  He'll likely get a roll to see if he can react when you get there.

 

Okay, so you may be asking: How do I know when I should make a skill roll and when I don't need to? 

There are three situations:

  1. When you are attempting to do something more difficult than you are able to do (see 'skill level difficulties below')
  2. When the outcome is uncertain
  3. When the most likely outcome isn't as interesting to the story as chancing it.

 

Alternatively, you use general Social ability and spend some points to either narrate it into happening, or get close and roll. 

If everyone at the table thinks that the story would be better if something happened regardless of it's reasonability then a number of points equal to the target are removed from the Drama Pool (a pool of 6 points which is refreshed each Act and can be paid into (and contributes to) personal pools of action points). 

 

 

0.1.3: Exceptional things can happen through spending points

This is a magical and heroic world, where those myn with the desire to achieve can do so.  Risky actions like you would see in a movie, comic book or fantasy novel, are all possible through the use of action points that are earned throughout the game by creating new content (stories, adventures, minigames, inventions, etc).  See the 'Pushing limits' section below

 

 

Make sense? 

If yes, then go onto the Next section

     - (#2) Tests using the Core Mechanic

If not, keep reading.

 

 

          

 

The plausibility factor is really where the cooperative aspect of play comes in.  Other players and the DM need to decide what is reasonable in any given situation.  If it is something fairly routine, then there is no reason to nit pick and all can just accept it.  But if the proposed action is not guaranteed, that's when dice rolling comes into play.  Dice rolling is a way to use probability, the characters statistics, modified by the difficulty of the action to test if it can happen or not.  This is further explained in section 2: Ranking Tests

 

Pushing limits

Dice rolling need not be the end all of a situation.  If the player has a very slim chance, they can expend points to increase their roll.  A single action point allows the movement of a single skill a single rank on the ranking mechanic ladder (see next section).  The important thing to know at this point, is that if you want to do something heroic and beyond your normal capabilities, you can spend points to gamble on success.

 


Navigation

Next section - (#2) Tests using the Ranks from the Core Mechanic

Index to all the mechanics: Mechanics

Summary


 

Relevant Links

Rules Clarifications for this section: 

  • Surprise attacks
  • Controlling NPCs (Non-player characters)
  • Autohitting

If something remains unclear then please use the comment field below to point out where we could make it better

 

Image CC

in order

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apothecary/4678317246/sizes/z/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/djbrady/1382064216/sizes/m/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/garyhayes/3777363711/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.