"System Wank" is going to be a new feature/series here. In a couple of discussions this week, I've found myself discussing particularly elegant or interesting mechanics from various games. So, I'm going to starting calling them out fairly specifically. Maybe one day I can collate all of these posts and make the perfect game.
As a logical place to start, I'm going with "core mechanic." This is a particularly nifty way to roll the dice and get results, taken from Edge of Midnight.
Since I'm guessing that over 90% of my audience has never even heard of Edge of Midnight, let me give you a brief overview of the game. It is one of the very few RPGs designed to emulate the noir genre. It was originally developed by Rob Vaux when he was still at AEG, and uses the classic AEG trope of "our world through a twisted mirror" for the setting. In this case, it's the good ol' USA, in roughly the 1930's or 1950's.
This world is still recovering from a Great War. We won the Great War, we're pretty sure, by using some kind of doomsday weapon that created the White Light. That was our moment of triumph, but nothing has really gone right since. The government has become secretive and controlling. Crime runs rampant in the streets. A job is a hard thing to come by. People will do anything they have to hold onto what they have, and maybe to take a bit of yours. We'd say that this is as bad as it's ever been. Except, really, no one can remember anything before the White Light. And only a very select Few even realize that that's strange.
The system is rules-medium, a bit lighter than World of Darkness, and about even with FATE. Characters are defined by stats (such as Brains and Moxie), skills, and professions. Stats and skills are rated from 1 to 10.
The core mechanic is simple, but brilliant. When you make a skill check, you roll 2 d10s, one for your stat and one for your skill. Add the relevant bonus to each, and compare to a TN. If both results are higher than the TN, you succeed. If both results are lower than the TN, you fail. If one is higher and one is lower, you partially succeed. A partial success is a success, technically, but often comes at some extra cost. A partial success on getting your buddy down at the police station to look up some records might mean you get the info, but he's going to make you take his cousin to a wedding next Saturday as payback. A partial success on leaping from rooftop to rooftop might mean you land wrong and twist your ankle.
One of the most brilliant bits is that the roll can actually tell you something about the nature of the partial success. If you succeed on the stat roll, but fail on the skill roll, then you had no idea what you were actually doing, but managed to muscle through on raw talent. If the reverse is true, then your plan was flawless, but you just didn't have enough gas in the tank to pull it off.
The system makes a lot of use of this partial success mechanic. Most of the professions give you an option to either change a failure to a partial success, or a partial success to a full success, for a specific skill. The combat system explicitly calls out what happens with most attacks on a partial vs. full success. It really works well.
I will admit that much of my love for this mechanic is that it was my first exposure to a "degree of success" system (not counting critical hits in D&D). Even having seen a few, though, I still go back to EoM as one of the most elegant.
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