Unlucky thirteen? Not around here!
Forgive me, By The Stars, for I am slow. It’s been eight days since my last confession.
I have dice mechanics! On Saturday Kat and I tested them in a single, small conflict. They’re rough and have lots of room for improvement, but they offer decision-making opportunities, they’re interesting in their own right, and they have a lot of what I call “knobs and levers.”
What are “knobs and levers,” you ask? They’re ways you can alter the standard resolution mechanic for special circumstances. For example, in classic Storyteller system, the knobs and levers were: 1) How many dice you rolled (generally associated with your skills and attributes), 2) The target number of what was considered a success (generally associated with the difficulty of the action you were attempting); and 3) How many successes you needed to roll in order to actually succeed (also associated with the task difficulty, IIRC). These allow the same dice mechanics to reflect different situations, something vital for RPGs.
Things are going pretty well, considering all the stress in my life. My dice mechanics currently exist only between my ears, so my primary goal for next week is: Write them out. It will enable playtesting. Which is also on the agenda for next week: Schedule my first playtest session.
See ya in six!