False Machine: A Dice Mechanic for Goose-Gold and Goblins

Friday 28 August 2020

A Dice Mechanic for Goose-Gold and Goblins

Here are the older posts on Goose-Gold & Goblins;

Intro

Char Gen

Crappy 1st attempt at Shinto

Shinto in Cumbria

A World Without Violence

Monster Brainstorm

Goose-Gold & Goblins

On twitter, @spookymeal did this charming illustration;

Now on to the prime reason for this particular post;

I hate designing games, I am terrible at it.

However, Goose-Gold & Goblins requires some kind of dice mechanic to power it, so I will have to either come up with, or, more likely, just pirate something.

Hence this blog post, in which I appeal to my audience for assistance in either creating, or just stealing, a mechanic to power the game.

Since my desired result is very simple, the constraints which lead to it are rather complex. I will lay them out here.

ROLL AGAINST/ROLL UP

After reading this illuminating series of posts from Dreaming Dragon Slayer;

In which he runs very simple D&D with his kids, I have been converted to his way of doing things;
The GM, (presumably the parent), rolls one die, then the player (presumably their kid) rolls another and tries to beat the parents roll.

Kids seem to really like rolling "to beat the dm", which I suppose counts for more if the DM is your dad.

I only want singular rolls, one die rolled against one number and you know the number you are rolling for, its open, right there on the table and you roll yourself, the roll is obvious, then you win or lose.
I know binary yes/know results might sound rough on kids but they are much easier to process and understand than more complex "you kinda win but sort of lose a bit" results, and hopefully GM advice and game process can help GooseMasters produce results which respect the nature of challenge and failure but which don't crush the spirit of the players.

NO MODIFIERS EVER!!!

Even if modifiers are small they are generally bad, especially for a Kids game. So leaving them out would strongly suggest improvement via die *size*. Having a bigger die to roll is immediately visible and *tangible* to children.

However, the complexities of the various probability curves are somewhat beyond me.

STANDARD DICE ONLY

Don't get me wrong the idea of producing a custom set of Zocchi dice, including a GooseMasters D7 with a rabid raging Goose in place of the 7, is tantalising.

Building the intermediate dies into the game also provides more granularity.

BUT, I want the game to be as accessible as possible, which mean no Zocchi.

MY IRRATIONAL DESIRE FOR A D20

I really like the probability curve of the D20, especially the fumble and crit results, they are just rare enough that the world still has a feeling of general verisimilitude but *just* possible enough that its worth taking a swing at even an unlikely result.

For me the probability cuve of the D20 with the 5% crit/fumble likelihood helps to create a lot of the storybook, slightly hectic, dangerous but slightly farce-like texture of a D&D world.

Go up the die sizes and I would say you generally get more "pseudo-naturalistic" results. Go down and I think you get something a bit lighter, more storybooky.

obviously my desire for a d20 curve conflicts totally with all of my other constraints.

SUPPORTING PCS WORKING TOGETHER

The idea of players being able to help each other, if that is diagetically appropriate, is pleasing to me.
Do I want it to be; you roll, and if you don't win, your friend can also add their roll (if they can think of a way to help)?

Or - you both roll together?

I think probably doing it sequentially is best? Its simpler.

The question of what to do if the GooseMaster rolls a 1 is still there. If we assume only single die then its always possible a player could also roll a 1. But if we are allowing 'assists' then if the players know the GooseMaster has rolled a one, if they can get help then they can roll without risk as they have two dice?

Maybe that's ok? How soft do I want to be here?

HOW TO DEAL WITH COMPLEX EVENTS??

What about complex interacting things which would otherwise use modifiers??

Presumably some classic OSR/Apocalypse World advice/guidance on when to roll, how to describe situations and arrange challenges etc would be appropriate and could cover this ground?

HOW TO DEAL WITH ADVANCEMENT?

Hopefully most of it should be tied into diagetic elements like additions to your house, improved resources, Goose-Gold (obv) wider alliances etc.

Otherwise the only advancement is hey - get a bigger die for this quality.

HOW DO THESE INTERACT WITH STATS?

Are my concepts for qualities awful? I kinda suspect that they are;

YOUNG or OLD
STRONG or DEFT
BIG or SMALL
NOTICE or ACT
THINK or FEEL
COURTEOUS or BOLD
ESCAPES –

Not necessarily bad for character *creation* but how do you meaningfully roll for being "Old"?
Likewise, the Courteous/Act axis makes sense for character creation and gives a decent image of a person but would I be better just ripping of Ryuutama with STR, DEX, INT and SPI.

What would a kid understand?

Its body parts isn't it? Because you learn to name those first in rhymes.

BIG & SMALL could stay perhaps, with BIG being used as STR and SMALL being used for stealth rolls, sneaking and hiding.

YOUNG or OLD could maybe stay, with YOUNG giving you more Escapes, and Old being a kind of magic-using, book-using score. Like you roll your 'Old' die to do magic and use books.

Also the idea that your Grandma can just naturally do magic seems appropriate, so if you are playing *as* your Grandma, or *a* Grandma, then knowing magic seems reasonable.

HANDS and FEET could be Dexterity, or deftness, or Skill, vs Speed.

CLEVER HANDS or FAST FEET? Is being able to move fast a reasonable exchange for all the ways hands can be useful?

COURTEOUS or BOLD - don't know if I want to put in a 'behaviour' stat, but I feel like this could work?

Maybe QUIET or LOUD? But that steps on using SMALL as a stealth die.

38 comments:

Von Rader28 August 2020 at 10:16
My 4y/o took to the system mechanics of Amazing Tales very smoothly. Its pick 4 things that their character is good at, attach each of those to a d6, d8, d10, and d12. Use a D4 for everything else. When a conflict arrises roll the dice associated with the skill. Just need to beat a 3. Perhaps you could lay out the Young, Old, Deft hands, Fast Feet as primers for them to pick to get them thinking
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Von Rader28 August 2020 at 10:17
I did a write up on it here https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/fml8bc/stuck_at_home_with_the_kids_heres_how_i_play_rpgs
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Jake Kiley28 August 2020 at 10:24
No worries about back compatibility imo. These will be different adventures.
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Tony Tucker28 August 2020 at 10:38
If you haven't already, you should check out the rpg called Quest. It has a pbta-like d20 resolution mechanic I think you'd find interesting.
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Kabo28 August 2020 at 11:20
Is "pick highest" on the table? Because that gives you more to work with. For instance, helping: instead of adding the two rolls, just pick the higher one.
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Picador28 August 2020 at 12:28
Thoughts on stats:

Quiet vs. Loud could mean: persuasive/empathetic vs. threatening/pushy.

Maybe the stats could be actions instead of qualities?

Run vs. Stand
Think vs. Act
Take vs. Ask
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subhuman28 August 2020 at 16:16
OLD is definitely the magic stat.

I was reading some fairy tales just last night, and when each of three daughters left home to seek their fortune, their mother gave them the choice of "the whole bannock, or half a bannock and my blessing." Of course, the OLD mother's blessing was the key to not getting turned into a rock by an OLD hag.

I don't think any of these daughters were YOUNG, per se; they seemed to be of marrying age. But that's kind of beside the point. The logic of world-shattering geese does not allow these gray areas.
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Jason & Jay28 August 2020 at 17:19
I just wanna throw in my vote for no back-compatibility. A pox on B/X
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Her Christmas Knight28 August 2020 at 19:36
(Comment A)
So to start with complex events, you mentioned Apocalypse World guidance as to when to roll, i.e. a Move.
To precede with a statement of purpose: A Move's meta-purpose is to impose explicit rules onto consequential and uncertain situations in an otherwise extremely freeform game. A Move has a ludic function but it also controls negative emotion at the table; you don't feel cheated if you understand the results going in.

A very good PbtA Move serves an explicit *mechanical* function. You could say that the game is rules-lite, but that depends upon how many Moves there are.

Now, beyond being a packet of mechanical rules, Moves in Apocalypse World and its derivatives sometimes indicate what *direction* the *scene/situation* should go in based on a roll. When an extremely freeform story suddenly meets an arbitrary funnel, where there are three outcome-directions, suddenly the path forward can feel artificially interfered-with. This is not always the case, but the more story information is contained in the move, the more it is the case.

Thus I believe that Moves are best used to impose *mechanical order*, not *narrative order* on a game. Narrative order should come from the GM. That's not to say there aren't some *beautiful* narrative moves in PbtA games, but in point of fact what's really needed at the table during a PbtA is mechanical adjudication, not narrative guidance for the GM (the Principles/Agenda can do that just fine).

Now, there may be a place for narrative moves. Your average published adventure is acceptable as a set of training wheels, but is almost always inferior to the adaptations made by a good GM when he is continuing the party’s personal story, no matter how brilliant the module content is. I always regret running published adventures; I never regret strip-mining them for content.
Similarly, to help a new GM create dramatic moments, you can have as many narrative moves as you like in the adventure, at as many junctures as you please. They can be used as a way to inspire the imagination of kids who play these games. In any case, these moves are tagged onto emergent situations and don’t represent a basic action.
For example,
When the Ganderer’s featureless face and the burning sigil above it beholds you, if you:
-Say something that you know isn’t necessarily true: Your clothes blow off your body.
-Tell it a lie: Your bones break with every word. But it doesn’t punish silence. Unless...
-If you have betrayed somebody who thought they really knew you: All your teeth fall out.
-If you are neglecting something, it will come to a head. If you’ve been putting off reaping the crops, they’ll blacken. If you’ve been neglecting your sick auntie, she’ll die. If you’ve been giving your drunkard friend booze, you’ll find him dead on your kitchen floor.
-If the community itself is guilty of such things, then dams will burst, bridges will twist into corkscrews and homes will be consumed in roaring infernos. The innocent are not spared the damage.
*But*
-If you leave it a great pile of food and jewelry, and your conscience is clean, you may find that the offering has been eaten when you return. You will find in its place the most fantastic Faberge egg that can be described; the kind that brings prosperity for generations.

And yet what does this say about the nature of the Ganderer? Is trying to meta-lawyer it a good idea? So there should obviously be consequences to situations outside of what is covered by the move; and if those consequences have a physical consequence, then that can be adjudicated by a more basic move. Better the GM has an idea of what it is like, and what it can do.
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Her Christmas Knight28 August 2020 at 19:37
(Comment B)
Even a beautiful move, like what happens when you commune with the Snow Goose herself, can't anticipate exactly what's going to go into the adventure before you meet Her, and thus a move like that can't really suggest a proper way forward. The utility of these things decreases as fiction builds up. And so all you have to rely upon are mechanical moves.

An example of a mechanical move:
When your character begins exchanging gunfire with another, roll 2d6 + Dex.
10+: Deal your weapon’s damage to one foe. 7-9: You both damage one another. 6-: You are hit and take your opponent’s weapon damage.

Any good? Dunno. Doesn’t matter, it’s an example of a mathematical function.

The idea behind a *mechanical* Move is that it is attempting to be a self-contained FUNCTION. What that means is that ideally it doesn’t reference RULES outside of itself and its INPUT, say a CHARACTER or two and the data they contain, and then it tells you what operations to perform on them if any, and then it gives you OUTPUT instructions or TERMINATES. All instructions are contained within the Move. It’s ok if those instructions are a little long if they’re sequential, complete, and perfectly explicit.

Simple as. One can fudge this with adults, although one does so at one’s peril.

You mentioned not wanting bonuses. I think that’s wise for a game for kids because extraneous variables (i.e. not contained within a CHARACTER data structure or a MOVE function) confuse matters and are basically going to be your main fail points at the table once there are enough Moves to cover basic actions.
Things like +1 Forward and situational bonuses to the roll exist outside of the extremely tight structure/function model of this system, which is why they’re normally computed by the GM at the time of roll, and otherwise adjudicated by the player himself when they are based off of his character’s abilities.
Extraneous variables cloud things going into a Move. That doesn’t mean they’re bad; they are like joints, they might be load-bearing. But they had better be when you’re rolling 100+ Moves per game.

The insight of +1 Forward is that it’s self-terminating. +1 Ongoing is more dangerous and is usually used for situations where the character is in some kind of memorable flow-state.
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Her Christmas Knight28 August 2020 at 19:37
(Comment C)
So the question: what actions should be mechanically represented in Moves?
You could go minimalist or maximalist. Minimalist is having a set of stats or skills that cover all possible difficult actions, and that makes for a good recourse even if you have edge cases covered by other moves. This still requires adjudication because you’ll have to pick out what die the GM will roll, but there can be a little bit of text in there as is common in RPGs describing the ballpark difficulty associated with each die the GM might select.

My inclination after running a lot of PbtA is towards maximalist because applying retaliatory moves on failure or partial success can sometimes feel mushy or ill-calibrated; a maximalist approach would describe actions with consequences built in, rather than being applied after the fact by GM fiat. But again, minimalist might be desirable for what you’re going for.
Traditionally there’s a six-attribute spread that you base rolls off of in PbtA, but a list of 12 Skills or something might allow for more gradient in determining whether somebody can do something. You could determine what number of Skills you’d need to cover necessary mechanical adjudications in the game by their presence alone, without relying on extraneous edge-case moves, without straining the mind’s eye. This would be one of the more involved parts of making the game, a bit of a balancing act, so I’ll leave that for you.

Assuming you have a fair number of Moves, how do you present them in a way that doesn’t boggle the player’s mind?
Part of the point of PbtA is that the GM never rolls. Obviously that’s not what we’re going for here, but the reason for that is that the rules and initiative are oriented towards the player. You can give the player a little menu, as it were, that lists all the basic action Moves and gives a brief description of what they do. Then, you can give them a more extensive folding menu that contains, point by point, the functions of the Moves.

Coda: I just discussed this a little with my roommate, and he had a good caution: class moves may take options off the table for other characters; take Power Attack for example. Why is it exclusive to fighters when they should just be better at it? In other words, it should have been a move that lets you get more out of a move that all classes share.
DW has a built in power attack; adding +d6 damage on a total success but exposing you to a counterattack should you not kill the enemy with the hit; that’s just one example of this kind of thinking.
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Her Christmas Knight28 August 2020 at 19:37
(Comment D)
Now I've always liked bigger dice representing greater power. I like the idea of the GM and the player each rolling one die to determine an outcome, as it’s a double-unknown.

d4 through d12 seems to map on to the spread of lay human capacity decently well. A child might have d4 in sprinting but a sprinter could have d12. If a realistic spread was the point then this would result in an unacceptable number of amateur victories, but for this kind of storytelling it could suffice because it would make it worth it to act bravely if you don't have a better choice; picture a kid running up and biting the soldier on the ankle before grabbing the pillow that contains the Lawgander's down and running off while the soldier’s jumping up and down, or darting down a craggy slope with your pockets full of eggs for your starving siblings while a mountain lion/flood/swarm of bees is on your heels.

d20 could represent supernatural power, if you wished to overcome the resistance of a truculent supernatural goose or get the best of some spirit. If you wanted to make a heartfelt plea to the Mother Goose to take your dying brother under her wing even though he's not a hero, or dive into a well and come back up with your sister's voice (or even drag the spirit into the light), or trick/flatter the Imposter Swan into letting you go while she's ushering you towards a chasm and a host of hostile little birds, serpents and shoats pour poison about you in her ear while vying for her affections, you can roll for it. But of course it is never safe to deal with the divine.

For advanced skills maybe either you can't roll if you don’t have the skill, or you have only a 1 so you have a 1/20 chance of getting lucky and tying, assuming something like that ever comes up; probably for GG&G, architecture, fluid mechanics and taxonomy would be appropriate examples.

If someone's helping you in something, perhaps you roll your skill of e.g. d10 and they roll d4. If the d4 happens to be higher, then the d4 result stands. That way there's only so much they can do (so they're not automatically adding to your roll, although that might be desirable just by dint of the extra muscle/brainpower/social proof), but they might win the day.

Then again, d4 might be very unlikely to beat both the principal's roll AND the GM's roll, so perhaps they add their *own* skill in that field, and if they roll higher than you, their result stands + the difference between what you rolled and what they rolled. If that's too much for kids, then their roll just stands.

If you want to account for a GM's result of 1, perhaps if both players are helping each other on a test roll and they both get 1, it's a tie with the GM. Perhaps there are cases where ties go to either the players or the GM.
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Linden28 August 2020 at 20:20
HOW TO DEAL WITH COMPLEX EVENTS??

You've probably read it since you've sourced so much inspiration from Dreaming Dragonslayer already, but they had a post about changing potential impact rather than changing the roll through advantage.

https://dreamingdragonslayer.wordpress.com/2020/03/28/advantage-and-impact/

So if a child wants to sneak past a goblin to snatch a goose, and they're wearing some noisy bell shoes, you don't give them disadvantage. You declare that the impact of the roll if they fail shall be the goblin not only catches them, but also calls for all their goblin friends, who run to check on the goose. Without the noisy bell shoes, the impact might be just the single goblin confronts them.

The linked article explains it a lot better!

Love what you've got going so far.
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pjamesstuart28 August 2020 at 22:32
(Deleted this from HCK in error)

Comment E)
In any case, I can see the reason for the double roll. Double drama. There's less mystery if you roll against a target number, but if the GM rolls and it's low, then you get excited but know there's no guarantee, and if he rolls high then that increases tension.

Regarding advancement, the thing I’ve always seen players love is developing a small business. It’s not called that, but it’s the same set of rewarding activities. So building their house is one thing, but engaging in some free trade out of one’s own establishment is also immensely rewarding. That’s not to mention skill advancement, which seems to have a neurochemical effect similar to microdosing cocaine. Nothing wrong with just upping die size; perhaps you could get some kind of dice pool at the highest levels, though that’s powerful.

Now for Qualities, you could have those assigned to dice. One example:
You’re an absolute unit. You have d12 in Big and d4 in Small. Hmm, you’ve lost some weight, now you have d10 in Big and d6 in Small. NOW YOU’VE LEARNED STEALTH FROM AN OLD HUNTER! You have d10 in Big and d8 in Small!
Or you only have one or the other and have to rely on someone else for the other. I think a kid might understand this better, though they can surprise you.

I don’t know if I would worry too much about backwards-compatibility; it would be relatively easy to add a system for that later, but could gum up the works right now.
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Sean Craven29 August 2020 at 11:13
Set a number to beat. Roll 2d10. And if you roll doubles, something special happens, the equivalent of a critical or fumble. If the number to beat is ten, the player will win a little more than half the time, eleven a little less. The numerical slope is a compromise between the flatness of twenty-sideddice and the savage bell curve of 3d6 while retaining the same basic range of numbers. And the more likely you are to succeed, the more likely you are to have a critical success and so on.
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Sean Craven29 August 2020 at 11:15
I apologize for leaving my comment before reading the full post. I just got excited by the request for a dice mechanic.
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Jack Tremain30 August 2020 at 14:55
I would not be able to work with those binary stats. They have no upside:
-no apparent mechanization
-invalidating middle grounds (there are no 5 feet people in this world, just BIG or SMALL. What the fuck)
-Everybody is weirdly polarized not in one, but in 6 or more ways. Also why I cannot have clever hands AND fast feet?

Kids understand almost everything, dont underestimate them. Going for Strenght, Speed, Intelligence and Magic is perfect for them. Also you can use different die sizes for all, so rolling them against the GM die vs die is possible.

An alternative is doing it through actions instead of capabilities:
Fight, Move, Understand, Charm

for superhuman capabilities like being very strong, etc use a random table so they can find what "heritage" they have; from troll blood (being big and strong) to an old dusty broom. It also serves as instant-background
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Her Christmas Knight31 August 2020 at 19:23
This last Saturday I ran a game based on singular rolls (e.g. d12 vs d8), no bonuses except variable die sizes, and no advancement, based on your and Sam Doebler’s ideas.

Each PC's main skill was d12 (with d6 and d8 as secondaries), and the average opposing roll was d8, with some d6s, d10s, and a d12 boss. Rolling felt really hard to predict (= tense) but die size was a decent enough predictor of victory in the end. There were a good spread of victories and defeats.

We also did something interesting that I recommend for games with 1 player and 1 GM. The player controlled a party but only one character was the “PC”; the rest were mechanically controlled by the player but had personalities controlled by the GM, a la Baldur’s Gate. Each of these secondaries had a d4-level negative personality "trait" that could be activated by the GM once per character per adventure to have them try to break free from the player’s control within an appropriate context; a glory hound might try to push ahead dangerously during a battle, an indecisive character might freeze up, a mercenary might suddenly demand a bonus and threaten to walk. The main PC had to use a leadership skill to reign them in; if they failed, the companion became an NPC and behaved according to his or her negative trait, ideally with a severity reflecting their negative trait’s die size.
The negative trait (“disagreeableness” basically, but it could manifest in any form of volatility, neuroticism or temptation) began at d4 but could be bumped up to d6 to increase another skill by a die size and so forth, up to d12. Thus powerful starting companions would also be deeply flawed individuals.

Regarding help: Mutual help was the biggest goddamn problem to hammer out. Eventually we settled on this: two characters could help each other if they both had the skill. In that case, they’d both roll and the highest result stood, but as long as one character succeeded the other wouldn’t suffer the negative consequence, and if neither succeeded then only one character would suffer the consequence. Not perfect, but it didn’t seem overpowered.
Normally, failure either inflicted a wound or blew the party’s cover. By the end of the adventure everyone except the main PC had been killed or captured, and he only had 1 wound left out of 3 (most enemies had 1 wound), so that was quite severe if perhaps ideal for a one-off. You mentioned escapes; you could use those in lieu of wounds etc when the GM beats the player.

Maybe in GG:G helping can be complementary; they use courteous, young, old or deft to cause a distraction while you use bold or small to sneak in, and there’s an increase to the latter’s die size if the former succeeds.
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Anton Paulissen11 September 2020 at 11:21
In terms of your stats and either/or character attributes, the Running with Swords game by Sam Sanford has something similar. They just keep them non-numerical, as a few FKR games do. The list of attributes is a similar length to yours, but characters just choose two positive and one negative. Having the attribute just effects the type of outcome that comes from a successful dice roll, rather than a statistical buff.
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Sebastian Tanier16 November 2020 at 22:48
Roll together.

Try to get over 10 if easy, 20 if difficult, 30 if very hard. The GM and child are now working together to make it happen. Not opposing each other. If there’s more players, they can roll to help too. Team work makes dreams work.

-P0rthos
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GH28 November 2020 at 12:07
It’s probably too late in the day for this. My S.M.A.R.T one-page RPG system is based on the AD&D surprise mechanic. You must roll under a target number, but the closer you get to the number the more significant the result. Like a game of ‘chicken’; the closer to the fail you get, the better the result.
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gluoftheworld14 September 2022 at 07:58
Listen. I know I've discovered this line of your blog way too late. BUT
I have become romantically engaged with this concept you are getting at. Please tell me you ended up publishing something I somehow missed! I want to run so many campaigns with this!
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