I get the thing about D20 and I think I’ve come up with a way to include it in my game. Let the Hero coin add a Heroic effort (D20) instead of Ultimate effort. I just thought it’d give the D20 it’s own special place at the top, without the swingyness affecting the game too much.
I am wondering about using a mixture of ±3 and the best/worst of rolling 3 dice. Perhaps using one for attempts and the other for effort rolls. I do think whichever one ends up for attempts will get used more than the effort one and I can’t decide which I prefer.
The other option with the Angry GM system is rather than add an obstacle for each six that turns up, you could increase the magnitude of the obstacle depending on the number of sixes. 6 sixes show up, uh oh a dragon just landed in front of you and it looks hungry.
I do however go round asking people what do you do, but sometimes I feel the fiction makes sense to stick with someone for a bit longer, then go to the other players for a while. I always think in terms of scenes in a film and the sub shots within each scene.
Right so to continue with my thoughts from last week.
Tags - character development
One of my issues with ICRPG and why I went to Dungeon world was that your characters back story had no impact on them without the gear. I like the focus on gear but nothing from the character was too much.
I imagine a ranger and a ninja would potentially have the same distribution of their 6 points. If they lost their gear there is nothing to distinguish their abilities, despite having expertise in very different topic.
I’ve seen people including levels, with tag words that provide bonuses. My thought is to expand the words into short sentences like aspects from FATE.
Each character starts with say 3 aspects - which each give a relevant bonus based on the characters background/skills/knowledge. That keeps the characters more unique and mechanically more inline with the fiction. Then at Milestone points you could let people add another aspect or improve one or replace one, perhaps having a maximum of 5/6 at any time.
I feel like this allows for some open character development, because you could completely change directions, but keeps it in a similar vain to the Loot bonuses.
The big 6 stats
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the big six stats. As someone who is good with my hand at making stuff, does parkour and rock climbing I always found Dex covering both to be really annoying. Along with doing martials arts and spending time studying the cultivation of wisdom (I know I’m cool). The big 6 have just always grated a bit for me.
I also thought of characters that they just don’t allow for. Imagine a gentle giant, who’s really smart and relies on that to solve situations, but doesn’t use magic. They’d just be mechanically void in D&D.
So I’m going with the 6 approaches from FATE accelerated.
Cleverly,
Sneaky,
Carefully,
Flashy,
Forcefully,
Quickly.
I think these are going to put a lot more power in the imagination of the player, and also get them stuck when they want to use their best stat but it just doesn’t work in the fiction.
To use melee combat as an example, the same fighter, may use a forceful strike, or show of and use a flashy one, or get in their quickly, or try to read the opponents style cleverly. I’m excited to see what happens.
It also plays into what I’m planning for magic.
Magic
The fact that wisdom spells didn’t take up space just confused me so I ended up diving into options and found people doing all sorts.
This idea was heavily inspired by A dragon game, thought they got it from somewhere else.
The spells are two/three words long, that is their name. Anything that the player can come up with that fits within the description of those words is a viable spell, the outcomes being decided at the time. Also the way the spell is being used decides which of the stats the player has to roll to cast it so there is no magic stat.
The restrictions of magic, as this has the potential for insane power are based on the Dungeon world Cast a spell and Elemental mastery moves.
Cast a Spell
When you unleash a spell granted to you by your deity , roll+Wis. 
On a 10+, the spell is successfully cast and your deity does not revoke the spell, so you may cast it again. On a 7–9, the spell is cast, but choose one:
- You draw unwelcome attention or put yourself in a spot. The GM will tell you how.
- Your casting distances you from your deity—take -1 ongoing to cast a spell until the next time you Commune.
- After you cast it, the spell is revoked by your deity. You cannot cast the spell again until you Commune and have it granted to you.
When you call on the primal spirits of fire, water, earth or air to perform a task for you roll+Wis. On a 10+ choose two. On a 7–9 choose one. On a miss, some catastrophe occurs as a result of your calling.
- The Effect you desire comes to pass
- You avoid paying nature’s price
- You retain control
I really like the Elemental mastery for this. In that it’s really scalable depending on the magnitude of the spell.
If someone has Fire ball, they could make a small ball of fire to use as a torch. If it goes wrong the downsides are fairly smalls. (careful stat perhaps)
If they use fire ball to launch a sun at an enemy (forceful), then if it goes wrong chances are a character is going to die or nearly die. It’s all about scale.
I also don’t like spells not taking up space, feels like it gives fighters a disadvantage on gear. So I’m going to attach each spell to an item (Loot) so they can be lost. The players and I (most of the time) don’t know what the spell is until the character does a Learn Spell type move. Based on the outcome of the roll the player gets more or less say in the name of the spell.
A dragon game just had two lists, You rolled 2D20 one picking a word from each list and boom there was the spell.
Finally I saw some talk about who is allowed to learn spells based on stats etc. Simple answer for my game. Does one of your aspects describe how you can do magic? If so you can do magic if not sorry no can do.
I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on my mad ramblings.
