Mechanics inform the playstyle

My group and I tend to play a lot of different RPGs and get exposed to a lot of different ways of handling the same design problems. How do you represent health? What do you roll for deception? How do you handle combat? How do you differentiate between different character types? How do you handle XP? How a given system handles these things and how much space is devoted to various things informs what game you will be playing.

Combat vs talking and the Edge system from Savage Worlds

We started running our Ravenloft game (Conspiracy at Krezk) using Savage Worlds system, mostly to test the waters before we delved deep with Savage Rifts and Rifts vs Star Wars. We aimed to create some more down-to-earth characters that aren't just some combat-focused adventurers. We hoped to find a lot of interesting options due to the large amount of books in the Savage Worlds roster and the system's popularity for making an interesting range of characters. As it turns out, a lot of the areas I wanted to take my character were severely limited.

In Savage Worlds, the system revolves around Skills and Edges. The first just inform what die you roll. The second are some more unique perks your character can take to augment a given playstyle.

I was thinking about making a character that could talk well to people. The options for that were being Attractive, being Very Attractive, being a Noble, or being Charismatic. All except Noble just give you +2 to roll, which is the blandest thing you can get from an Edge.

Now, what are my options if I want to be a combat character? Block, Improved Block, Brawler, Bruiser, Combat Reflexes, Counterattack, Improved Counterattack, Dodge, Improved Dodge, Elan, Extraction, Improved Extraction, First Strike, Improved First Strike, Florentine, Frenzy, Improved Frenzy, Giant Killer, Hard to Kill, Harder to Kill, Improvisational Fighter, Killer Instinct, Level Headed, Improved Level Headed, Marksman, Martial Artist, Improved Martial Artist, Nerves of Steel, Improved Nerves of Steel, No Mercy, Quick Draw, Rock and Roll, Steady Hands, Sweep, Improved Sweep, Trademark Weapon, Improved Trademark Weapon and Two-Fisted.

Similarly, there is a lot of emphasis and page count devoted to armour, weapons, combat vehicles, combat manoeuvres, healing, movement rate, as well as different monsters and burst templates you can apply. Talking to people is 1 page in this 161 page book.

Unsurprisingly, the system was only useful when we engaged in combat and didn't do much for us in other situations. After a few sessions our characters that didn't want to specialise in combat have ran out of Edges to buy that would be meaningful to them. In the end, this wasn't the best engine for the game we were trying to run - one focused around mysteries, exploring the unknown and people getting in over their heads. For that, we had to switch to...

The Lovecraftian horror of Chronicles of Darkness

Chronicles of Darkness is the second edition to the New World of Darkness line, which itself is a successor to the Old World of Darkness line. While the old systems used to be very min-maxy, the new one is less so.

We switched from Savage Worlds into Chronicles of Darkness after one season of our game and the game turned from being an eclectic group of adventurers into a more Lovecraftian tale. The Humanity system forced us to deal with facing off against horrors, dealing with slow erosion of mental sanity, dealing with lingering wounds and so on. On the flip side we also had characters that could persuade people by leaving themselves vulnerable to favours, foster a network of contacts among the militia, or even a character that just built themselves a safe library to study the occult. And all of that felt great!

All of these were natively supported by the system. While in Savage Worlds we most likely wouldn't be using any of these since the rules did not cover them, in Chronicles of Darkness we embraced them since they were right there, and our playstyle changed.

Violence as language in Broken Worlds

Broken Worlds is an RPG set in the Kill Six Billion Demons world. The system is heavily inspired by the Wuxia genre of fiction, and as such, the game revolves around martial arts and thus combat. We gave this game a try and the expectation pretty much matched reality - it was a system where you were expected to engage in combat, let your fists do the talking and communicate via violence. So if you'd go in and expect to have an adventure in the vein of Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, you would be in the right place. If, however, you'd try to use this system for say, our above example of a more down-to-earth Lovecraftian story with mystery and intrigue, you would be sorely disappointed.

Monopoly and selfishness

Mechanics inform not only the playstyle in RPGs, but the same could be said about board games. And what better example to use than Monopoly:

In Monopoly, the rules incentivise you to be ruthless and cut-throat to win. Even if a player is a nice person in real life, when you start the game, you will inevitably turn into a jerk, because that's how you win. Mechanics inform the playstyle.

Conclusions 

The mechanics of a system inform the playstyle of the players. A system with a heavy emphasis and page count dedicated to combat will inevitably work better if you focus on said combat. If you want your players to engage with your story using something other than their weapons, you should use a system that incentivises non-combat solutions. While you can always pull the "just roleplay it out" card, everyone will often try to resort to the path of least resistance and go with the listed mechanics with predictable outcomes rather than more nebulous "I think this should work but the rules don't say anything about it".

If you are a game designer, keep those things in mind - don't just grab one system of mechanics and expect it to make your game play the way you intended. Look at what you want the players to experience and roleplay while they play your game and then either find a system that caters to that, or make one yourself.

Player agency over dice randomness

As I explained last time, I'm a mechanically-focused gamer. I enjoy engaging with various game systems to figure out in what ways they work, and in what ways they don't. Last time I covered the difference rolling two dice instead of one can have on game feel, and this time I would like to talk about how a few systems handle player agency over dice randomness. By that I mean various mechanics and resources the players can use to influence their dice rolls, especially the important ones.

The problem - roll and pray

At least once every session a player will come across a situation that is very important to them - perhaps they are down to one last hit point and need to kill the enemy before they themselves are killed, or the character is preparing for a hack that is a culmination of the adventure and their paycheck depends on it. Those dramatic moments where the players wish there was anything they could do to improve the odds, but alas - they can only roll and pray.

I really don't like such situations of being powerless and not having some mechanic one can leverage to improve those odds. Luckily, there are a number of options that various systems have implemented.

Rerolls

The simplest approach to addressing the issue is letting the players have a reroll handy. Those often are a resource shared either between the party or given to the characters individually. Stars Without Number has an Expert class that can reroll one non-combat roll each scene, Savage Worlds gives players a few Bennys per session they can use as a reroll, Godbound has a Word of Luck that is all about manipulating rolls and causing rerolls in various ways.

In general, rerolls are a good option when the characters are somewhat competent at a task and should be able to normally succeed at it. It's a bit less useful when the character is trying to tackle something they are woefully unprepared for - if it's unlikely they will succeed, they will likely still fail with a reroll.

Improving the odds

Another approach that can be taken is improving the odds of the roll before it is made. Chronicles of Darkness gives you more dice to roll if you have the proper gear, and you can further improve your odds by spending Willpower - a limited, refreshable resource. The system also features a number of ways to fudge the dice math to imrove the chance of an exceptional success by using 9-again or 8-again rules. Star Trek Adventures makes you accrue Momentum by performing tasks you're good as so you can buy more dice for a roll when it's really needed. CoD, STA and Stars Without Number give the option of other characters assisting the primary character performing a roll - usually a success by the assistant gives a small boon to the primary roll.

Overall, improving the odds can be especially useful when the character isn't as competent - even a small boon to an unskilled character usually translates to much better odds than adding a simple reroll. They also usually are simpler to justify narratively - you have a clear explanation of why you're getting that +2 to the roll.

Success, but at a cost

Success in a role playing game is often seen as binary - you either succeed, or you don't. Maybe you also have a botch or an exceptional success, but either way - the line is drawn hard. However, there are a few systems where there is a gradient to the failure.

In The Veil (or Powered by the Apocalypse in general), you almost always have two or three gradients of a success. You can outright fail, succeed completely, or in the middle - succeed at a cost. Perhaps you don't get everything you wanted, or there is some complication that occurred as a result of your actions. Star Trek Adventures gives players an option to Succeed At a Cost instead of accepting a failed loss. This allows the task to be successful, but some complication will arise as a result of that roll.

This option is useful for fudging the numbers a little - if the player is just slightly off from succeeding. It's always useful to have it as an option to allow the player to decide whether their task is important enough to warrant the extra cost.

Controlled botches

Somewhat related to the previous section, although distinct enough to warrant its own. In a lot of games you will find rules for botching a roll - failing so badly it's causing some trouble. World of Darkness up to Chronicles of Darkness had a rule where rolling 1s meant subtracting from successes and causing botches if their amount got too big for example. While fun in their own right at times, it's perhaps best when this option is left to the player - letting them decide when they want to be discovered, mislead and so on to create a more interesting game.

Chronicles of Darkness is perhaps a good example of how to give players agency over their botches. When a roll is a failure, the player can opt to make it a dramatic failure to get a beat (a point of XP basically). Outside of attempting a roll with only a chance die, this is the only way to botch in the system, giving the players agency over when it occurs, and rewarding them for allowing it to happen (hopefully giving the GM a chance to make the game more interesting as a result).

Trumping the roll

Some games allow the characters to outright trump the roll with some usually high-end powers or skills. Stars Without Number have some Psychic and True AI powers that roll back an entire turn or a single roll, or go as far as dictating an entire turn and all of its rolls completely (max level True AI power). The same system also features a Warrior class that can auto-succeed at one combat roll per scene, or negate an incoming attack completely. Godbound has one Gift that once per character's entire life they can succeed at any undertaking, albeit only at a basic level.

Those powers are neat, but they need to be carefully balanced not to throw the entire game off balance.

Conclusions

There are many ways RPG systems have figured out how to allow the players to influence their rolls. It's good to have at least once option available to the players, and multiple of these examples can be used simultaneously without feeling like they're overlapping too much.