Some of you might be familiar with the Exigency campaign. That’s the culmination of a few playtests seeking to eventually produce something well-suited to- well, made for- play-by-posts. The mechanics used (I don't really have a name for the system) need a review. They need documented, they need standardised, and ideally they need to be more adaptable to other settings. So, come one, come all, let’s figure out how this works like the good old days. And I know there were brainstorms prior to mine, I just can't find them. This space reserved for when people inevitably link me up. EDIT: hah, found some! On Play by post games and the preparation thereof A thread about GM'ing Play by Post Games What it currently is Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler As with many similar systems the basic core consists of 1d20 (representing effort and sheer luck) plus attribute, plus speciality, plus situational modifiers. That’s it. In the iteration used in the CF game, there is no dice used other than 1d20 for resolving challenges. The system used in the Exigency campaign is perhaps unusual in that there’s no charisma stat or similar attribute, merely a Social speciality used in conjunction with Intelligence (calm appeal to logic), Willpower (passionate appeal to emotion) or Strength (traditional intimidation). Theoretically it could be used with anything relevant to the situation, just as with any other speciality. When used elsewhere, there’s no reason that any number of attributes couldn’t be used, as discussed in “Wider changes” below. But Exigency uses Health, Strength, Agility, Focus, Willpower, and Intelligence, and specialities address the differences. So a high Focus, which governs things such as concentration and perception, would mean a character had superior eyesight/hearing unless they had a penalty to their Sense speciality. Encounter powers and aspects Encounter powers and aspects are more recent additions. Aspects are akin to perks or feats, granting various bonuses or changing how that particular character beats challenges- i.e., Martial Arts [Agility] allows the purchaser to use their Agility rather than their Strength when resolving hand-to-hand challenges or grappling etc. Encounter powers occupy the same “slots” as aspects, and they’re very similar except they’re expended on use until the end of the encounter (i.e., the players get a chance to rest). Examples include Exertion [Attribute], which allows a character to take 20 on the associated test in return for temporarily losing a point of it, and Adroit Assault, which lets a character add their Agility to their Melee attack roll. At much higher levels, both are available in a use-at-will aspect. The number of slots is dependant on the character’s Health for physical aspects/EPs, and their Intelligence for mental ones. I haven’t figured out the exact formula yet! Observations regarding the version used in the Exigency campaign I’m actually slightly surprised at how successful it’s all been… in general feel, that is. Further play testing will no doubt reveal the cracks in the balance. Health and Intelligence seem awfully powerful as attributes go, but respectively they’re the “primary” stat for overall physical and mental proficiency so I think that works quite well. The biggest problem is consistency, and documenting exact rules instead of playing by feel, so to speak. Grid System’s character, Terrence, alternates between game-breaking effectiveness and borderline uselessness because of his telepath/empath build. This is more representative of the setting and the scenario than anything else, as some of the party’s encounters have been with psi-resistant or psi-immune hostiles, but as a buff/debuff character and interrogator Terrence has excelled. tastydonuts has Dustin, who is the token Social expert and probably the best all-rounder. His only flaw is that he will snap in half if he ever has to grapple with an opponent strong enough to exploit his weakness and fast enough to negate his Agility. But between some good rolls and some good equipment choices, he’s barely been scratched. Egos has Cyril- he’s been dubbed the ninja, and with good reason. He’s the Stealth and Melee expert and along with Cutter, he’s taken down some incredibly tough enemies- oh, and once he wandered off and beat the entire line-up of a martial arts tournament while his colleagues fought a crazy cyborg. Apparently Adroit Assault lets you clean up when your Agility is that high… Zetetic Elench gives us Alliah, the analyst. There’s some crossover with her and Terrence when it comes to forensics and investigation and similar, but she has the advantage of being more physically resilient and not relying on psionic skills to get the most out of her abilities. More recently Zetetic had Alliah steamroll the defences of an enemy facility, which was a strangely strategical moment in a mostly action-and-conversation-based campaign. Ryadic brings us Cutter, the party tank, proving that Melee is a viable ability even in the high-tech sprawl of the Exigency setting. He’s taken more damage than anyone else yet refuses to die- proving the (over?) effectiveness of the Health stat mechanic. He’s the damage magnet but he can sure as hell deal it. AJAlkaline40 has Stephen. Stephen is a virtually superhuman genius who is a neurosurgeon by trade (everyone needs a medic) but has also demonstrated the adaptability of the Intelligence attribute by beating computer systems. Everyone, in short, has had their fair share of achievements. The party is incredibly high-level by the standards of the system- “normal” people would have barely half of their prowess in attributes and specialities. Fortunately nobody excels at everything and everyone has taken very different approaches to similar situations… a typical RPG campaign, really. Proposed ideas Bring back other dice! Self explanatory- it seems slightly odd to dismiss anything other than d20s when rolls are made entirely through online, automated mediums such as Invisible Castle and its fellows. For example, it’d add greater variety to damage rolls, both dealing and suffering it. If an ability or accident can reduce a target’s Health or Willpower by 1d4 points, then it instantly adds greater potential depth than a flat value of 1 or 2. Assuming competency? Currently the system assumes competency on the part of the player characters- they can attempt first aid, bomb disposal, fencing, sniping, juggling, anything without actively having prior training/experience in the form of a speciality. I’m not sure if I’m entirely at home with that, or if future players will like it. I’m tempted to take a leaf out of D&D’s book and just give in and implement trained and untrained skills. E.g., Medic, Tech, Marksmanship- trained, Melee, Evasion, Sense- untrained… or whatever turns out to work and make some sense. If you use an trained skill without investing in it, you’re not entitled to use your +Attribute bonus, you’d simply roll the d20 and take the result: and trained skills would cost an extra point to purchase in character creation. It would still be possible to make an omnicompetent utility character by pumping up your Intelligence (and Focus) and purchasing a swathe of trained abilities, but it’d cost you. And, again, maybe this is something else that could be used optionally. If your campaign involves the divine or the supernatural or the generally superpowered, maybe assuming competency is right up your alley. Wider changes The most obvious include reducing or increasing the number of attributes, or shaking up specialities so that they don’t exist at all or so that characters have nothing but specialities with no basic attributes- it all depends on what works and feels best. But if every character was only ten or so numbers, with no aspects or encounter powers or similar, that’d probably be too simplified. They’d have a lot less character, for a start. More complex potential changes include the addition of damage points, stamina, will (psi points/morale) etc. These did exist in the system’s earliest iterations but were quickly dumped for simplicity’s sake- but maybe in some respects it’d be welcome to have depleting stats other than primary attributes to play around with for damage and special abilities. I’m really not sure. What I’m asking What do people want from a system made with PBPs in mind? What have you seen elsewhere that worked, and how could those mechanics/approaches be applied here? Have you got your own system that I can rip to pieces and steal we can discuss, as a whole and in its individual pieces? A typical brainstorm. Hell, I'd want to hear from everyone, even if its just a suggestion for a name better than "CF PBP system"

I'm not going to talk about your system, since I hate d20s so that couldn't possibly end well. Instead, I'm going to talk about something from Wushu that is almost critical for a PbP(in my opinion) The Law of Narrative Truth: Feel free to describe your actions and the results of your actions, and regardless of your die roll, they HAPPEN. The roll of your die is only there to determine how close you get to finishing the conflict. The victor in the conflict can describe their victory in whatever terms they desire, and that's how it occurs. Also, since in PbPs combat tends to move incredibly slowly, it's best to junk any combat system you have and go for straight opposed rolls like you would use in any other form of conflict (sneak vs awareness becomes your attack vs their defense, the guy who rolls the highest/gets the most points wins.) I like to call this the Law of Opposed Rolls: All conflicts or confrontations are determined by opposed rolls of the appropriate skills. Circumstantial penalties or bonuses may be added to one or the other side, but after all modifiers, the one with the higher roll/most points wins. If you combine these, the Law of Narrative Truth and the Law of Opposed Rolls, you have a system that can let you get through a conflict in a day or a week, instead of a month or two, regardless of your system. And frankly, if I'm playing a PbP that I am not just casually dabbling in, I want to see that. Otherwise I know it will take forever for anything to happen, and it will probably stall out as soon as blades/guns are drawn.

d20s aside, although in the test campaign there are static challenges as well as opposed rolls, I think the old version met the latter law at least (Although it makes me think that if anyone wanted to the whole thing could be easily retuned to use D6s, or any other dice. Instead of having attributes averaging at 4 for D20 rolls, 1 is the human average with D6s, and speciality bonuses would be a lot rarer and mean a lot more, etc.) And part of the "Assuming competency" issue is that higher-level characters- or at least those with big numbers in the character sheet- tend to play the games in terms of determining the degree of their successes, rather than whether or not they actually succeed. Likewise, challenges and opponents could be tweaked to do the same for a party of any experience level. Which is definitely a good thing in terms of combat, although maybe not when it comes to utility skills. Hrrm...

If you're going to stick with a simple system(which most PbPs should do, so they can actually progress,) then yeah, the type of die used is mostly irrelevant. As far as uber-competent players, it's not hard to invoke a degree of success chart at all to let them flex their egos. Honestly, that's all I would ask from a base homebrew pbp system. Any sort of powers/abilities can be shoehorned in quite easily(especially if you use the aspect style stats from Wushu and other ultralights)

As far as Exigency is concerned, I think you've hit the right balance between rules and freedom. There are enough rolls to keep things interesting, but not so many as to bog things down. There are enough stats and things that players can have a wide variety of effective characters, but not so many as to needlessly complicate things. I'm not sure what to say about dice rolls for damage. It seems that that would be loading more on your end as GM. I know I'd prefer fixed values for simplicity's sake, but if you're willing to do the extra rolls yourself, I'm not going to argue.

Yeah, I suppose extra complications on the GM's end are better than extra complications on the player's ends. ...that sounded bad. But in a lot of campaigns it's possible to map out damage tables etc. all behind the scenes so it never reallyy clogs anything up, let alone the smoothness of the input the players are responsible for. One thing I do want to figure out (in general, rather than exclusively for Exigency) is what to do about the attributes. Part of me wants to scrap them in favour of a couple of dozen specialities, because I can never figure out good ways of deciding what determines what.

Scrapping attributes is not necessarily a bad idea. One thing that a few systems(most notably Spirit of the Century, but also Wushu) do is to have 'aspects' rather than attributes and skills, which are talents or quirks that the character has. So, say, a gun-toting mook's only line on their character sheet is Gun-Toting Mook 4. If you wanted to combine that with the specialties in Exigency, you could allow each character to further specialize their talents as they progress, giving them bonuses in specific areas of each aspect. For damage, I actually just had a thought. In the opposed roll to achieve victory in combat, why not just have the remainder on the victor's side be applied to damage, and the total HP of the opposing character is equal to the defensive stat that they're applying. You could also easily apply that to social conflict, and various other instant checks(stealth and the like) would just be the standard opposed checks.

Ahh, I really like the sound of that. You could even tie it in to the idea of depletables like HP, will, stamina etc., except rather than static values, they're determined on a per challenge basis by rolling with the appropriate defensive stat. After all, that's no biggie thanks to IC and co. For minions and mooks and other disposable fodder, they don't even roll to determine, they just have a flat value, so that in most cases one successful attack instantly kills them. "Boss" characters and significant fights could last for far longer, if so desired, but Thug #84 can be dealt with with a single roll. So say we clash in melee- my 14 vs your 17. We had both rolled for HP (which would be the relevant stat in physical conflict) and I'd got 21, which becomes 16. Granted if I critically failed and you got a critical hit, in many cases the conflict might still be resolved in two or three rolls, but the potential for prolonged, tactical combat is still there (especially if you use encounter powers or whatever we'd call them to even the playing field).

Rolling HP isn't a bad idea at all. But yes, that's pretty much how it would work. Various powers could affect the environment, offer bonuses to damage aside from your to-hit roll(so even if you got a bare hit, your weapon would still give you damage, great for Big Weapons) and change skills that you're rolling with/against. (Mind powers operate in combat but your opponent has to use Willpower instead of HP to defend!)

Rainfall you are now my go-to co-brainstormer Quoth, LaOs, tasty, Grid, and 42% of the entire internet can breathe a deep sigh of relief. ...ahem. It could work excellently via scrapping the existing attributes and specialties and just having all the usual end results as alterable values. I.e., HP, THAC0, armour class equivalents, they're not something your attributes make, you literally determine them directly... Obviously those are just samples, and someone could go beyond just having 4 primary skills to have sub-skills in. Although that HP value is pretty high for a dice + bonus, but you get what I mean.

I suggest a bidding system to create quasi-randomization; essentially, each character would have set stats and skills that are never rolled against, so that a character with a strength of 3 always wins an armwrestling match against a character with a strength of two. However, heroic characters would have a certain amount of grit that could be expended on particular actions to effectively raise their score temporarily to overcome that which ordinary folks couldn't. The balance would lie in that grit would only recharge at certain intervals (rounds, scenes, w/e), so if you blow all your grit on one epic action, you leave your character open to retaliation, as you will not be able to raise your defenses against a superior attacker.

The problem with a bidding system in a PbP is that it can take forever. Say a guy makes an attack, his target raises his defense with grit, then guy making attack raises his attack with grit, then attack is resolved. That'll take an exchange of three-four posts. I'm thinking a single opposed roll per round of combat, or if you're fighting mooks, a single roll against a target difficulty.

I like that too. Call it grit, edge, finesse, whatever, it would fill the role that encounter powers currently fill by supplying an expendable, difficulty-reducing resource that's not unlimited. You boost your one-time roll, but it has no impact on the follow-up (to stop endless one-upsmanship). Hmm. Maybe thats what Stamina and Willpower could assist with. You expend one to boost physical feats, and the other to boost mental feats (albeit not mental feats dependant on intelligence). See, this is the problem I always have. I'm never quite sure whether we want to add content and depth, or remove it for simplicity. A bit of both would be favourite, paradoxical as it sounds...

You boost your one-time roll, but it has no impact on the follow-up (to stop endless one-upsmanship). Yeah, that is the direction I was trying to go. Bids would either be done in secret so as to prevent "Price is Right" asshattery, or defense would have the advantage (to make characters more survivable), i.e. attacker bids first, then defender can counter-bid to negate or lessen the attack. Either one works, the first being grittier and the second more heroic.

Sounds about right. Prior to deciding that attributes annoyed me, Focus determined attack order (I was always concerned it should've been Agility). If here we're merely cutting out the middle man and directly giving every character a Reactions and Evasion etc. stat, I think it'd work well to have defenders have the advantage by default, unless the attacker (significantly?) beats them in Reactions. Basically it'd fill the same role as initiative.

I'm a fan of having a single role versus a target difficulty. It allows the PC to make their narrative because they immediately know the result of the thing that they did, and can address failure or success without having to wait for the GM to oppose the roll before moving on to the next person's turn.

Hmm. I suppose that method allows the GM to post the enemy's stat sheet so the PCs can do a whole chunk of actions in a go (isn't that the case in one of the Star Wars ICs right about now?). In my past PBPs (less so in Exigency, not sure why) I tended to do all possible rolls up front to give the effect of a pre-created statsheet while retaining the random element. I.e., you need to dodge this value, fail that you need to resist this value, fail that you need to take a save vs. death, etc., rather than having to have a PC-GM-PC-GM post chain with individual rolls or checks. Plus, I guess it adds to the suspense if you know your spot check needs to be successful to avoid a DC40 toxic trap

Hmm. I suppose that method allows the GM to post the enemy's stat sheet so the PCs can do a whole chunk of actions in a go (isn't that the case in one of the Star Wars ICs right about now?). In my past PBPs (less so in Exigency, not sure why) I tended to do all possible rolls up front to give the effect of a pre-created statsheet while retaining the random element. I.e., you need to dodge this value, fail that you need to resist this value, fail that you need to take a save vs. death, etc., rather than having to have a PC-GM-PC-GM post chain with individual rolls or checks. Plus, I guess it adds to the suspense if you know your spot check needs to be successful to avoid a DC40 toxic trap Yeah, I think both Arcanis and myself do that in our Star Wars games. For things like spotting and finding stealth, I don't necessarily let the PC's know what the DC is. I will occasionally handle that in the OOC thread. As far as things like defenses go, I consider it fair play. After all, I know what all their strengths and weaknesses are in the metagame, and I let them know the same for their opponents for the most part. And fortunately I tend to have players who are very good about mainting the character vs. player knowledge thing. This is especially important in settings like Star Wars where all the information is out ther in a convenient wiki.

All very true. Although that's one advantage of (undocumented) homebrews- the players can literally have no idea what's coming up next. "And the Giant Armoured Bonsai Chaos Lobster flings itself through the nearest wall!!" "...again?"

yeah, I pretty much have adopted the stance that in a PbP setting, you just can't sustain that sort of meta-level suspense and tension due to the slow nature of the medium. if you try, you're just going to make a sluggish game go even slower, which is never good. so at the expense of the players feeling worried or nervous, I just opt for the speed that total transparency ensures so the narrative can move along at a brisk (for pbp) pace. I try to make up for the lack of meta-level drama with drama seeded in the narrative... to my success or failure, which is still up in the air Mostly though it's just a case of minimizing the pitfalls and emphasizing the strengths of the medium. pointing to my highly enjoyable Exalted game, the only reason it's come this far is the group's chemistry and my decision to drop a clunky rules-set for a system that is entirely devoted to drama and narrative.

All very true. Although that's one advantage of (undocumented) homebrews- the players can literally have no idea what's coming up next. "And the Giant Armoured Bonsai Chaos Lobster flings itself through the nearest wall!!" "...again?" does it yell "OH YEAH!" ? sorry... scarred forever by commercials from the 80's. but wow the image of a giant yet immaculately groomed tree with claws and antennae... in armor wow

yeah, I pretty much have adopted the stance that in a PbP setting, you just can't sustain that sort of meta-level suspense and tension due to the slow nature of the medium. if you try, you're just going to make a sluggish game go even slower, which is never good. so at the expense of the players feeling worried or nervous, I just opt for the speed that total transparency ensures so the narrative can move along at a brisk (for pbp) pace. I try to make up for the lack of meta-level drama with drama seeded in the narrative... to my success or failure, which is still up in the air Mostly though it's just a case of minimizing the pitfalls and emphasizing the strengths of the medium. pointing to my highly enjoyable Exalted game, the only reason it's come this far is the group's chemistry and my decision to drop a clunky rules-set for a system that is entirely devoted to drama and narrative. Which, for the record, is "Wushu", the system that Rainfall talked about the merits of in PbP games.

Yeah, I think at its heart any PBP game is a narrative beast. I'm still drawn to rules-free RP (aka collab story) threads and projects, the only reason people really use rulesets is for some consistency, and to stop people playing by means of constantly making "I beat this guy and do this" statements, but with a good group that's never an issue in the first place. does it yell "OH YEAH!" ? sorry... scarred forever by commercials from the 80's. but wow the image of a giant yet immaculately groomed tree with claws and antennae... in armor wow Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler They... uh... actually exist in the setting. Long, strangely awesome story.

Yeah, I think at its heart any PBP game is a narrative beast. I'm still drawn to rules-free RP (aka collab story) threads and projects, the only reason people really use rulesets is for some consistency, and to stop people playing by means of constantly making "I beat this guy and do this" statements, but with a good group that's never an issue in the first place. It's funny... but in a way RPG systems seem to be trying to tackle the fundamental problem of playing cowboys and indians as a kid (or soldiers, or whatever). "I got you!" "Nuh uh!" "Yes huh!" "Did so!" "DID NOT!" "MOM! JIMMY'S CHEATING AGAIN!" edit: I just realized that in a way this could mean that people who are jerkoffs about exploiting RPG rules are basically being bratty five year olds underneath all their maths and shit.

edit: I just realized that in a way this could mean that people who are jerkoffs about exploiting RPG rules are basically being bratty five year olds underneath all their maths and shit. The best thing, the absolute best thing, about using homebrew RPG systems as well as settings is countering shit like that It's just as petty and rules-lawyering (well... High Court judging more like) but I do not care. Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler This one guy spent the whole campaign watching other players die because he didn't want to risk his skin, and constantly telling me and my co-GM that certain things were unrealistic, or complaining that we assumed the party knew too much (considering one guy was a pirate, I think he'd know about ships, but this was not welcome to him). "Alright, since in my previous level I invested in utility skills- and maxed four of them- I want to take a point in Agility." "No." "What the hell do you mean 'no'?" "You have sat in the party's ship for three weeks, scrying the enemy fort and sending the group updates. You haven't done anything remotely physical." "Doesn't say I have to invoke something relevant in the rules, it's just a character point, and I want to put it in Agility." "I just amended the rules to be more realistic. Also, anyone who sits down in one place too long loses Agility due to major leg cramps. You never specified that you got up during the time." EDIT: Also I think the whole cowboys and indians conflict-resolution thing is why I wanted Nerf guns so badly as a kid.