Tinkering with Attributes

The Pendragon-style, list of personality traits with mirrored counterparts that together equal 20 is an idea I'm pretty solidly married to for my RPG. But using those Attributes with a dice pool system is something I've been struggling to implement.

Today, I'm gonna put forward an idea and we'll see if it makes sense.

I'll start with the following Attributes (examples only, as subject to change):

1. Introvert/Extrovert

This is your preference for social situations versus staying at home.

2. Friendly/Unfriendly

This is your preference for kindness versus cruelty.

3. Ambitious/Lazy

Your preference for leisure versus the grindset, and how you apply yourself in situations that require hard work. 

4. Unkempt/Kempt

Your preference for order versus chaos; how you present yourself and how you take care of your home.

5. Oblivious/Perceptive

Your ability to notice the things around you (or not) and your ability to navigate social situations gracefully.

To define your Attribute, you pick a pair and roll 1d20. You then decide which Attribute in the pair that the d20 roll will apply to. The other Attribute gets a value that, when combined with the dice roll, MUST equal 20.

• E.g., Mortimer rolls a 15 on "Introvert/Extrovert" and decides that he's more of a homebody. That 15 goes into Introvert, and the remaining 5 (together, equalling 20) goes into Extrovert.
• He then rolls an 3 on "Oblivious/Perceptive", and since he's already not much of a people person, he decides that part of the reasoning for that is that he has trouble ascertaining people's true motives and reading facial expressions and body language.
• He chooses an Oblivious score of 17, and a Perceptive score of 3.

Next, we decide on how we use those Attributes!

Go down the list of Attribute scores, and pick the five highest. Each of those scores gets an associated die (in order from highest score to lowest score): d4, d6, d10, d12, d20. Attributes with the same score are treated as receiving the same die, meaning it's possible to have more than five dice in some situations!

• E.g., since Mortimer's Ambitious score is a 19, that's his highest, and he applies a d4 to it. His Oblivious is a 17, his next highest, so it gets a d6. Then comes Introvert at 15, gaining a d10. His Kempt score is also 15, so that gets a d10 as well! And then Friendly (11) and Unfriendly (9) get a d12 and a d20, respectively.

These are bonus dice, added to your dice pool.

You get an Attribute die (a d4, d6, d10, d12, or d20), a Skill die (a d8) and one or more Talent dice (also d8s). Then you roll them together, and attempt to roll under the target number, which is equal to your Attribute score.

• E.g., Mortimer is attempting to flirt with a woman at the bar, by the name of Dina. His goal is to roll under his Oblivious score of 17. He rolls 1d6 for his Attribute (getting a 3), 1d8 for his Skill (Charisma; getting a 4), and is using his Animal Magnetism Talent (1d8, getting a 4), and his Alcohol Tolerance Talent (getting a 5). He can't tell when women are flirting with him, but my god if he isn't charming. And he can hold his liquor! Together, this equals 16, just rolling under the target number. He succeeds!

Already I'm seeing an issue: in a roll-under system, players won't want to put their best foot forward, using ALL the Talents available to them. Yes, it's possible to succeed, but it comes at a risk that people won't want to take.

In a roll-over system, I would reverse the Attribute dice: d20, d12, d10, d6, and d4, going from highest Attribute to lowest.

• E.g., instead of a d6, Mortimer rolls a d12 (getting a 6). Adding that to his Skill and Talent rolls, he gets 19! He succeeds, beating the TN of 17.

The advantage of this is that big number = neuron activation, so players will see these large rolls and feel good about their success, and it will encourage them to seek out high numbers in the future. This in turn also gives a reason to have a high Attribute, and to use as many Talents as possible.

Assuming 5d8 from 4 Talents and 1 Skill, the average of such a roll (before counting Attributes) is 22 (and a 6d8 has 27). A crafty player could use smaller dice pools early on to intentionally rack up a large number of Talents later in the game, which I'm not necessarily opposed to (it pays to have options), but given the max of a 5d8 pool is 34, using EVEN MORE Talents is gonna create MASSIVE results! Imagine a 10d8 pool (avg. 45), or even a 20d8 pool (an average of 89.99 recurring)! That's by far above and beyond what an Attribute-based target number would even require, so I don't know why anybody would WANT to do that (besides mitigating risk of failure from abnormally low rolls?)

Add 10 from a d20-based Attribute score, and we're REALLY cooking with fire!

Hold for Applause

That's where Applause would come from, I feel. Any d8s (so, Attributes don't count) that take you in excess of your target number would be saved and added to a later roll. Let's say we use Mortimer's dice pool from earlier--let's take his Animal Magnetism Talent, and add that d8 to his Applause. The audience lets out a "WHOOOOOO!" in approval to a bold pickup line on his part, and he gets an Applause Die.

Applause Die are bonus die, always available until you spend them, as a kind of meta currency. If one were to add them to a future, identical roll of 19, the Applause would bring you to 23 (assuming another roll of 4).

You'd likely gain two Applause from that roll (having two dice above the target number, assuming one Talent roll of 4--putting you 2 points above the TN and therefore "in excess" of the TN, plus another 4 from the Applause), so then you could spent those in future. This would create a sort of momentum, making future successes more and more likely.

The downside of Applause is that more dice makes matches less likely, making it harder to gain new Talents. This seems like a good way for the Applause system to police itself--players want Talents, because Talents are a reliable source of bonus dice that you can use every time. Applause are one-and-done: spend them, and they're gone. If you want more Applause, you need to make rolls utilising many Talents: there's a strategic element at play here.

This will also require a level of specificity from Talents that make it difficult to apply them to EVERY roll.

As Applause are simply bonus dice, you'll almost always be in excess of the TN if you use them wisely, and will therefore always increase your Applause exponentially. A roll of 19 becomes 23, which becomes 27, which becomes 31, which becomes 35. You simply can't fail anymore. It brings me back to the issue of having 20d8 Talent pools all over again.

I don't know if "being less reliable than Talents" really holds up, to be honest.

Since Applause are a meta currency, and since I want to differentiate Skill dice from Attribute dice, it makes sense that Applause dice should also be differentiated.

Fallout: the Roleplaying Game uses Bottle Caps; these ones are created by NastyaCutStudio, on Etsy.

I think this is the secret. What we want is a tangible, non-dice-based token or chit, which represents a static bonus (say, +1 to the result), rather than simply extra dice. We already have extra dice (from Talents), we don't need them from two sources.

If we took a +1 bonus for Mortimer's roll of 19, he'd instead get 20. Still in excess of the target number of 17, but since Applause in this system is not a die, he only gains one Applause instead of two. This encourages players to strategise and choose Talents that benefit them, but also provides options for players in situations where none of their Talents are suitable. Instead of getting by on their competence, they're getting by purely on whether or not the audience likes them. They succeed because they test well in focus groups, because the show gets good Neilsen ratings when they're on-screen.

That's extremely sitcommy to me.

God I am tempted to call my meta currency "Urkels".