thread: 2009-06-09 : Adequacy, Cause and Effect
On 2009-06-09, Abkajud wrote:
I've been working on something vaguely like this for forever: two players roll dice pools, aiming for more successes than one another, and when you're "up" by 5 successes, pop! You can either wound your opponent or gain a total tactical advantage over him. There was the innate assumption that you had to work a lot harder to kill somebody than to capture/detain them, and a big emphasis on what the dice meant, moment to moment. This attitude continues in the current iteration of the idea, with lots of dice-to-cloud stuff, but not a lot of cloud-to-dice.
I've since moved on to doing things a little differently (each throw of the dice you win, your opponent loses a die; running out of dice = cornered/forced to your knees/etc.), but I realize that there's precious little reference to the in-game fiction once the dice start rolling. The simple Sorcerer technique of GM rewards for exciting and dramatic description would be a nice addition.
My first crack at metagame currency hasn't really tied into this in any way, unfortunately - rather than "my honor is at stake! +3 dice!", we do a much slower, more long-term Honor Vote each session to "track" the PCs' reputations. I find this dissatisfying, as it doesn't really laser in on decision-making moment to moment so much as a general finger-wagging "Are you being honorable?" attitude. Blech. Things to work on.
