Otherkind Dice

Okay, all my thinking about conflict resolution in the prior post is, as I said, tied into reading about really cool conflict resolution systems that do require addressing the fiction and do push the players into directions they wouldn't necessarily have taken their character themselves, but in a satisfying way. One dirt simple but totally awesome way of doing that is Otherkind Dice.

The link above is really short, it takes like 2 minutes to read, and if you don't check them out, the rest of this entry will be pretty vague and possibly confusing. Just a caveat.

So anyhow, these rules are really cool. I dig them a lot, and I'd love to use them at some point. But I don't think they're necessarily right for "The Book of Threes" for a couple reasons. First of all, they don't emphasize teamwork or leaders/allies at all, which is a huge part of TBoT, obviously. Secondly, I want the game rules to reflect somewhat the 'sort' of character you have. I didn't go for an out and out description of everything your character is or can attempt to accomplish, as with more traditional games like D&D, because, frankly, if it makes sense at all and would be cool, I want you to be able to give it a shot. But I did want the rules to reflect whether you have a smart guy, a buff guy, or a spirited guy (or whatever) to a degree, not for that to be only decided moment to moment during play.

Now, let's talk about what makes them awesome, with an eye towards how that can influence my designs ("The Book of Threes" and whatever else). First off, they're wicked simple. You can play an exciting and engaging RPG with 3d6, some friends, and some imagination. Next, they give the player a lot of control over what shape the narrative takes, but without just being 'say what you want to happen'. Within that control are some interesting decisions to make. This gets right to my pet concept of 'opportunity cost'. Sure, you have the chance to just out and out get what you want the way you want (as you should have a chance of doing), but when the dice don't come up perfect, you have to make tough choices about what's really important to you (and your character). This is the joy of tactical decision making married to character/story-focused play! Hurrah! Also, by separating accomplishment of the action and suffering negative consequences for it, you get a much more interesting range of accomplishment than just success/failure. You get everything from 'you fail and it sucks a lot' to 'you succeed and its awesome', but most importantly, you get the in-between stuff of 'you fail but don't get messed up' or 'you succeed but pay for it' with some degrees of separation there too.

This is an awesome example of elegance in design. You have a simple, easy mechanic that produces complex, fun results. I would love to bring this quality to my designs. I'm currently pondering how this and some other resolution mechanics can color my ideas for the rules I've written. There might be some big changes coming, but I'm at a wall right now. Play would probably suggest some good ways to go.