A Dice Based Roleplay System - Discussion

[Eonwind]

Hello! I've been thinking something like that since quite some time but I was ever unsure if bringing up the issue was worth the time. As it seems there could be some interest and could be the case.

I know 3.5 system very well and I played it for ages both as a player and as a DM and I can guarantee it will not blend well with the way PS and its settings is designed. I could go down to finely explain why point by point but it would take too much time, just let me say the magic system will not blend at all.
Cortex system is a bit better as lot of its mechanics blends in much more in the current system, unfortunately I think it's not "open-sourced" (but I may be wrong) and it still need some hard fixes to adapt it to PS.

So basically my idea was to ask you if there would be any interest in creating a dice based PS System.

The rules created could be developed  in the official wiki http://planeshift.top-ix.it/pswiki/ and made available to the whole community.
Some of the advantages:

• a simple dice based system that will offer a very simplified version of the "official" system.
• the possibility to use your existing character and its stats with no need to go down to hours of time for conversion
• creation rules for higher level characters as well
• the possibility to share your character sheet with the GM (or player GM) through MyPlane http://planeshift.teamix.org/myplane/ (if your character isn't a trained one its stats could be written in the OOC description.
• no need to adapt different skills as currently listed skills could be used in the system right away

About me I don't have much time at hand because I'm focusing on the next (huge) PS update but I would be able to provide guidance for anyone willing to spend some time on it for the community.

[Rigwyn]

I think if there was a dicing system that everyone agreed on, that would be great. It would be even better if the game provided something to:

 * keep track of character sheets and rolling
 * report rolls to a player designated or player accepted DM
 * provide a way to join a game and appoint or accept a player as DM
 * provide that DM with some administrative mechanisms for seeing and comparing rolls

I would say lets experiment first and see what works and is most enjoyable.

We should probably also discuss some of the things that do not work for RP with the existing mechanics as well as what does.

For example:

Planeshift awards stats and skills in response to physical training and questing ONLY. I see this as bad. It would be better in my opinion, if such skill and stat advancements were the result of role playing feats and accomplishments - hence the reason for using an offline character sheet. In this case, they would be rewards for actually playing and would reflect your character's REAL accomplishments in a meaningful way.

One of the problems with awarding stats and skill for leveling is that is does not really contribute to roleplay and it creates a terrible imbalance in the game. For example, I could stop playing with everyone for a few months and totally max out my character. When I return to my group, my characters is now a demi-god and really doesn't fit in. Furthermore, he can now overpower the entire group if we were to try to roll against his leveled stats.

Awarding stats and skills for leveling only encourages leveling. Leveling is NOT roleplaying.

I do realize that the game itself cannot look at your RP and award stats. If we allowed each character to have an "RP character sheet" and either let them update their own RP stats on that sheet, or let their accepted DM update those stats, then that would be swell. Yes, I am suggesting a totally separate set of stats just for RP alone.

Lastly, I would suggest against making the dicing system inferior to the game's stats system. If you do that, then people will subvert it because it sucks and use their own system to track stats and skills ( Much like what we are starting to do now )

[Eonwind]

Rigwyin I really appreciate your efforts to bring in constructive criticism in the topic and don't take it personally but ... let's stop saying some stupidity in particular:

Planeshift awards stats and skills in response to physical training and questing ONLY. I see this as bad. It would be better in my opinion, if such skill and stat advancements were the result of role playing feats and accomplishments - hence the reason for using an offline character sheet. In this case, they would be rewards for actually playing and would reflect your character's REAL accomplishments in a meaningful way.

a computer IS NOT able to evaluate your RP not now and not even in a distant future, not even an human can do it without knowing the full story and background (an this is the reason why only GMs can do it in every known RPing) game.
So just to be clear: it is not going to happen ever, not now and not in a distant future, so always bringing up the issue is pointless.
This is also the reason why I would really like a bigger GM involvement in the players community: they have the power to do so and woud be desirable they'd put it to good use.

One of the problems with awarding stats and skill for leveling is that is does not really contribute to roleplay and it creates a terrible imbalance in the game. For example, I could stop playing with everyone for a few months and totally max out my character. When I return to my group, my characters is now a demi-god and really doesn't fit in. Furthermore, he can now overpower the entire group if we were to try to roll against his leveled stats.

Awarding stats and skills for leveling only encourages leveling. Leveling is NOT roleplaying.

I do realize that the game itself cannot look at your RP and award stats. If we allowed each character to have an "RP character sheet" and either let them update their own RP stats on that sheet, or let their accepted DM update those stats, then that would be swell. Yes, I am suggesting a totally separate set of stats just for RP alone.

I may go on for hours discussing many of the points you bring up and why I disagree they should be implemented in a game (RP or not whatever it is) but in particular I would like to point out:

* we always said every action in game has to be considered IC so training, hunting, levelling in general has to be considered IC. So I don't mind if you and other players ignore it, do quests OOCly just to get the reward or whatever and then want to ignore the consequences. You're free to do it but don't pretend the Devs the GMs team or all the other players to ignore it in any way. It's your choice and the choice of the other players that agreed with you.
* the game awards exp for questing and doing mental and physical game actions; this game and any other computer game is not going to support awarding whatever happens in the player's mind anytime soon
* we are not going to support a dichotomous system with a real time system and a RP system in the code not now and not in the distant future. Not even mention supporting a dual system to track stats and skills. You already have everything you need for that: an IC tab and an OOC for your char to fill in with whatever you want and MyPlane which already let you share all this even when you're offline.

Now going back to the main topic my idea is not to make an inferior system but a simpler system allowing two roleplaying players to quickly determine the RPed actions outcome by rolling two dice and a comparing the results with no need to use a calculator or go through endless calculations impossible for a human mind to do in no time. All this in a way consistent with the PS setting.

[novacadian]

I believe the d20 rules are also available online

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/basics-ability-scores/getting-started
http://www.d20srd.org/

This would seem to be a huge advantage for both GM's ease of not having to explain things and players' ease of having the rule set readily available.

Cortex may have the advantage of removing the inevitable‎ philosophical rule interpretation debates of table top gaming. The GM would simply explain what to roll and how that affects the outcome.

However, my GM experience is that players like to have the rule set available to them.

[Ebonwumon]

I think if there was a dicing system that everyone agreed on, that would be great. It would be even better if the game provided something to:

 * keep track of character sheets and rolling
 * report rolls to a player designated or player accepted DM
 * provide a way to join a game and appoint or accept a player as DM
 * provide that DM with some administrative mechanisms for seeing and comparing rolls

So lets just be honest here: if this is what you want, you just want an online tabletop roleplaying system. Roll20.net is a really good one. PS brings absolutely nothing to the table for what you want.

[Eonwind]

I think if there was a dicing system that everyone agreed on, that would be great. It would be even better if the game provided something to:

 * keep track of character sheets and rolling
 * report rolls to a player designated or player accepted DM
 * provide a way to join a game and appoint or accept a player as DM
 * provide that DM with some administrative mechanisms for seeing and comparing rolls

So lets just be honest here: if this is what you want, you just want an online tabletop roleplaying system. Roll20.net is a really good one. PS brings absolutely nothing to the table for what you want.

And this is not going to happen because PS is a MMORPG and it's out of its scope to build an online tabletop system.
The only thing I can help with is creating a "roll" based system to help roleplayers unwilling to use PvP to handle roleplayed fight in a way consistent with the official mechanics.

[Rigwyn]

Well, for those who are intersted, what I am looking to do is to find a relatively easy way to use dice or the /roll command to resolve rp conflicts and determine outcomes or actions. This would be a strictly player-made solution that's independent of the game's mechanics. If it's possible to use the game's stats and skills in a way that seems fun and fair and without players having to grind to keep up, then fine, otherwise, I'd be happy to ignore the stats and skills that the game awards for questing and grinding and just go with stats and skills awarded in RP. These could be tracked on paper or in the ooc tab or something.

I'm not sure what was up with your last post, Eonwind, but I did mention in my post that I am NOT suggesting that the game would or could interpret roleplayed events and award points based on that. As for suggesting the possiblility of the game offering mechanics to aid in the rolling of dice or in supporting character sheets, I would like to withdraw that suggestion altogether. I won't argue further about why the game's stats and skills are useless in RP, I presented my argument already, and you answered it clearly - planeshift is an mmorpg.  ( I interpret this as, "screw roleplaying, this is a grind and shoot game." That is fine with me - I have no intentions in trying to change that. I just want to entertain and roleplay with fellow players who have similar interests. )

As for roll20.net, I think I'll check that out tonight.

[Eonwind]

[...] - planeshift is an mmorpg.  ( I interpret this as, "screw roleplaying, this is a grind and shoot game." That is fine with me - I have no intentions in trying to change that. I just want to entertain and roleplay with fellow players who have similar interests. )

No your interpretation is wrong, this is a mmorpg ( = MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLEPLAY GAME) and roleplay has a primary focus in PS and we want to support RP as best as we can. We are just not going to support a full fledged tabletop RP platform because it's out of the scope of this project.

Back to topic what I was thinking was something very simple as a confrontation of rolls between players after the roleplayed declarations have been done. Example:

/roll d50 + RELATED STAT/40 + RELATED SKILL/10 + CIRCUMSTANCE BONUS

A melee attack with a STR 200 + Sword 100 (circumstance bonus is ad-hoc bonus determined by the roleplayed situation): d50+15.
This is just a very rough system, more a proof of concept than anything else, also the type of dice rolled can be changed to give more or less weight to stats or skills.

Likewise a char creation could be as simple as picking a race, assigning 50 points to every stats and assigning 150 character points to the stats, skill could be chosen by assigning them as the player best fits with a starting pool of 30.

[novacadian]

Awarding stats and skills for leveling only encourages leveling. Leveling is NOT roleplaying.

Well in the more traditional RPG tabletop/roll20.net-ish campaign one can get XPs for completing a quest of sorts. Traditionally that means you kill X amount of Mobs and get X amount of XPs which one would translate to levels. That need not be the case however.

The PS GM, which is being suggested here, could place an amount of XPs to be shared out during a quest, breaking it down into small parts much like a GM may award XPs after a nightly session of table top play. How these XPs are to be used could be up to the group/GM as well.

Perhaps they could be used for skill development, yet just as easily they could be used for other things more attune to RP in the PS sense. Maybe enough for an item, knowledge, a means to bid the outcome of an RP event. For example "that was a hit". "No it wasn't". "I bid X XPs it was." "I bid X XPs it wasn't." "I don't have that many XPs so I guess it was." All these suggestions are just to show XPs can be handled any way the group/GM decides them to be used. They need not be stats/level based alone.

There is also a tradition, yet rarely used these days, of awarding XPs for good RPing in RPG table top. Instead of being forgotten about like in most campaigns in this day and age it could be brought to the forefront in this RP that is being suggested.

What both Eonwind and Rigwyn are suggesting do not sound in opposition to me. Perhaps just coming from extremes of the same spectrum. Eonwind's dice mod sounds very useful. How it is used, by a player like Rigwyn, may be a total and pleasant surprise from the intent of the creator.

- Nova

[verden]

I have always wanted a way to roll against another player's skills or stats. A outward bound saving through, so to speak. A way of saying could a another player accomplish something, yes or no. The results of the roll would be indicated in chat, rather than privately to the user. This could be annoying to non-participant characters, so it would be better if it were only allowed in guild or group, with any  considerations that might apply. It would also be good if two skills or stats could be taken into account in this roll (or more but two would suffice I think).

I can already hear the grumbling from the roleplaying-is-not-mechanics faction. I think the last time I brought this up I was accused of things like wanting to "implement a completely different combat system or game" ... But I did add two feature requests to flyspray long ago.

[Ascomanni]

I guess I think it is a bit much to say a d20 system is incompatible, but I do agree the magic system is a problem. I have played a d20 system and found it really flexible. I am not saying we open it up to the multitude of books out there, but have a simpler system designed based on it. If this cortex system is a better fit, lets try that. I just have no idea what it is so I will not be able to head this up. I might keep tinkering with a d20 idea (as that is what I know) but count me in to give the cortex system a go.

[Eonwind]

I guess I think it is a bit much to say a d20 system is incompatible, but I do agree the magic system is a problem. I have played a d20 system and found it really flexible. I am not saying we open it up to the multitude of books out there, but have a simpler system designed based on it. If this cortex system is a better fit, lets try that. I just have no idea what it is so I will not be able to head this up. I might keep tinkering with a d20 idea (as that is what I know) but count me in to give the cortex system a go.

I know very well both d20 system and PS internal mechanism and I'm very sure d20 is almost incompatible with PS, I also think d20 (while I played it for ages and I still play it weekly on tabletop and I really appreciate this system) is far more complex than it should be for a dice based system whose purpose is judging if a RPed action is a success or not. Also note that such system could be used effectively in the PS environment only by who knows the system very well... which I suspect could be you, me and a very selected few in the PS community
Also consider converting a character from PS to d20 could really become a nightmare even just because d20 foundation is based on classes, an alien concept in the PS system. And I suspect even providing "template" will sure won't satisfy the taste of most PS roleplayers.
That's way I suggested a straightforward and very simple system with very few rules ontop of a simple but very customizable char creation system.

[novacadian]

I know 3.5 system very well and I played it for ages both as a player and as a DM and I can guarantee it will not blend well with the way PS and its settings is designed. I could go down to finely explain why point by point but it would take too much time, just let me say the magic system will not blend at all.

Running an old school D&D campaign on roll20.net there was a difficulty of most players not having access to the original basic/expert rule set. This lead me to simplifying parts of the system that required detailed knowledge/charts. One such area was magic.

In the original system there is the complicated handling of spells to level. That is to say, for example, a fifth level MU gets 2 first level spells, 2 second level spells and 1 third level spell when totally fresh for the day. When the player loads up his/her/kra's character in my online software many charts are uniquely generated for the character. One thing that is generated is spell points. Each spell is assigned X spell points. All first level spells are assigned 1 spell point, second level spells 2 spell points, third level spells 4 spell points and so on in an exponential fashion each level. A fifth level MU in my system gets 10 spell points to be used as they wish. The spell point assignment could be modified according to their intelligence (INT) stat to provide some variance. Each time a spell is used a record is kept. When they total the number of spell points that the software assigns them for their level then they are out of spells for that day. This system could be used on any magic system that the GM has assigned spell points to the list of available spells. It would not matter what Way is used, only if the character has the needed spell points left to cast it.

As far as classes are concerned, taking the old D&D system it would be my suggestion to only use the human stats with slight tinkering of those charts to give slight modifications for the different PS races. Kran would get strength (STR) bonus, perhaps others dexterity (DEX) and so on; much like halflings in D&D have.

My players generate their characters in cgi scripts of my creation. Those scripts then generate the D&D charts unique for each character. Most of my players have never seen a D&D basic/expert rule set. Yet with their unique charts that will change for them as they level and a list of spells and what they do they have all that they need to get up and running. Simplicity should be what is being sought in a system for PS. Many players come into my campaign having never played RPG and never having seen D&D rule sets; yet are role playing from the first session.

Who needs graple and climb skills when they can roll against dexterity (DEX) stat? The GM is there to add mods to the rolls so that, although the same basic roll, with mods it does not seem like it. My motto is the KISS approach (Keep it simple stupid). We are there to play not take a 1st year course in d20.

When all else fails we have a luck roll. A 1d100. Fifty or less they get their luck. Fifty-one and greater they fail. A player found a +1 sword in a treasure a few weeks ago. They asked what type of sword it was. They were asked to roll their luck. They succeeded. Because they were a halfling it ended up being a short sword. If they had failed it would most likely have been a hard to wield two handed affair.

Eonwind has my agreement that d20 is incompatable; yet for the reason that it is too damn complicated. If this idea is going to fly it has to be simple and fast paced in my opinion.

[Roled]

I have been silent since Rig's first post because the conversation has turned technical here and as most of you know, I have little knowledge or interest in the technical aspects.

My interest in a SIMPLE dice based system is personal (perhaps too personal?) to Roled- due to a quirk in the early days RR managed to max all his stats. But I don't play them because it seems unsupportable to my character, who doesn't like to fight, and will only fight if he has to or to protect someone weaker.

So for me its how to play RR in a fight that doesn't discount his real training in sword and melee and magic and yet doesn't automatically overpower his opponent- the lucky blow to the jaw, the superior cunning or experience in a fight, the vaugeries of unclear situations. To make the fight interesting to both/ all and with no foregone conclusion.

So I see this as an enhancement to my role play.  To acknowledge what RR CAN do and would, like protect himself with magick if he can, without playing superman with a little pacifistic elf.

I appreciate those who like and get the math and I am reading these discussions. Just wanted to reiterate my rp interest!
RR

[Rigwyn]

To give a little more clarity on what I had in mind:

For casual role play, some of the situations that we run into would include:

1. Player vs. Player RP fights
2. Feats - like making a potion or disarming a trap - ( within a roleplay session )

For more game-like RP *Events* as I proposed in the first post - where players embark on a player lead quest and start off with a common understanding of why they are there and what they need to accomplish - and possibly a fresh character for the event, I would predict a need for the following:

1. Dice fights against narrated npc characteres. ( these characters would either be alts or we would just imagine that they are there )

2. Feats  ( like trying to interpret a scoll, detect a trap, or heal a fellow player )

3. Use items or abilities gained as a result of participating in this player lead event. Possibly gaining stats or skill in the process. Again, these stats and skills would be tracked by the goup, not by the game's mechanics.


I agree with Roled and Nova on keeping it simple, but also keeping it flexible.


For roleplayed player vs player fights, usually we just determine how strong the caster is what sort of defence the target might have, and what circumstances might aid to hamper the attack. Sometimes I overlook my own stats if the fellow player is playing a strong character but does not have mechanical stats. I tend to go more by what the character is supposed to be than by stats. It's rough guess work for the most part.

How hard could it be to approximate this with dice? Anything more accurate than a rough guesstimate would be equivalent.