2 Workers 2 Placement

Update: see my 2w2p tag for all posts on this framework.

Or, "how to play an RPG as if it were a cooperative worker-placement board game." This (sub?)system is in response to Marcia B's worker placement manifesto, which I endorse. It inspired me in a specific way that I realized probably can't be communicated effectively in a couple of sentences so here it is as a whole post.

I have some additional thoughts about how to flesh out this mechanical skeleton (specifically, to use it to replace the overloaded die in the enchantingly fractal structure of Brendan S.'s Hazard System) but in the interest of actually getting a post out there I think this is good enough. Drawing the rest of the owl is left as an exercise to the reader.

structure of play

The GM describes a situation, and the players ask questions and decide what their characters are going to do. The GM identifies what tasks are being attempted, what their goals are and communicates what the risks are for each. The players make a final decision of which characters are on which task.

For each task, dice are rolled and its outcome settled. The GM describes the new situation and the cycle resumes.

before rolling

Find out the number of (six-sided) dice based on the number of people on a task: 1 die for an individual, 2 dice for 2-3 people, 3 dice for 4-6 people, 4 dice for 7-10, and so on. People with experience count as double their number and specialists count triple.

If task uses some scarce resource, there is a risk of using it up. At the GM's discretion, the players may declare that they are using up a scarce resource before rolling to roll one extra die.

after rolling

Once rolled, the players must assign individual dice to goals and risks: each roll of 5-6 achieves a goal or removes a risk and each roll of 3-4 advances a goal or avoids/delays a risk. If no die of 3+ can be assigned to it, whatever the risk threatens happens and whatever opportunity there was for the goal is lost.

Perceptive readers will note that this is more or less the dice mechanic from GHOST/echo, which I have previously riffed/elaborated upon.

Unless the GM says otherwise, no risk may be delayed more than twice, but advancing the same goal three times achieves it.

complications

To increase the difficulty of a given goal, divide that goal into multiple steps which are each treated as their own goals. The opportunity to work on a later step should not be lost as long as an early step is being advanced.

Similarly, risks can be heightened by splitting them into multiple risks; a simple way to do this would be to treat the same consequence for each participant as a separate risk.

stop me if you've heard this before

Sometimes, the Ref may ask for a roll of the dice. The most common type of roll is a d20 roll.
The \gm sets a difficulty class (DC) and whoever is making the choice rolls the die and adds a modifier. If the total is at least equal to the DC, the actor gets what they want. Otherwise, they may fail or need to pay some price to succeed.

If a roll is a contest between two characters, the DC is equal 9+ the total modifier of the target. Otherwise, see below for guidelines on setting DCs.

What is this?

Basically I'm pretty set on a lot of the specific mechanics for my 3e-derived game. Here I'm trying to stretch myself and present only the stuff that's not about character creation, on account of that being the section of the ruleset I have a tendency to work too hard on without drawing the rest of the owl.

The form of what follows, presenting DCs by task rather than by skill (haven't included a skill list in here, but it will be much less granular than these categories) follows the first D&D Next playtest packet. The actual numbers are largely based on a d20ification of this analysis of the hidden d6 skill system of OSE/BX.

talent, time and tools

Being a universal 2d6 resolution mechanic and some extra bits.

An attempt succeeds if a roll of 2d6 is at least equal to the required target number:

• You have an appropriate talent, time and tool: 5
• You are missing one of those: 6
• You are missing two of those: 7
• You have none of those: 8

A roll of 10+ (regardless of target number) is a clean success. A particularly stressful situation may require a clean success to avoid costs or complications.

Talents

Create a character by giving them 2-3 traits or skills and however many talents your Referee finds appropriate. 

If you don't start with a talent you must:

• Practice for a season with a skilled teacher or three seasons on your own for the archery, climbing, thievery or any weaponry talents.
• Slay three armed foes by your own hand for the fighting talent.
• Become initiated into the inner mysteries of a cult for its ritual talent.
• Survive ten days in the bush without aid or supplies for the wilderness talent for those environs.

Combat

Talent. The fighting talent is for hand-to-hand or hand weapons and the archery talent for bows. No talent is required for crossbows or guns. Weaponry talents do not affect the target number of attacks, but they allow the attacker to use any special properties of the weapon.

Time. You have time if the target is surprised. 

Tools. Close weapons for hand-to-hand and non-close weapons otherwise.

An armed attacker gets +1 to their roll if their target is unarmed. A character with a longer weapon than their opponent starts with a +1 advantage to their attacks, but a clean success seizes the advantage from one's target (or seizes it back).

In hand-to-hand, a clean success damages, disarms, pins or throws one's target. Otherwise, success merely holds them. A held character may do any of those to their opponent with a clean success. Otherwise, success reverses the hold. Any success by the holding character may damage, disarm, pin or throw the other.

Magic Rituals

Magic rituals are done with one roll but involve a sequence of steps. Some might require all of the following, and some only one or two:

1. Guarding the space
2. Guarding the magician
3. Opening the way
4. Fixing the terms
5. Closing the way
6. Purifying the magician
7. Purifying the space

Talent. Each cult has its own path of rituals, any its ritual magic talent counts for any ritual on that path. Anyone with such a talent is aware of the presence of other talented magicians and of powerful spirits, and may address them mind-to-mind.

Time. Rituals of 1-2 steps take 10 minutes, minus one for every time the size of the group of magicians doubles. Each additional step doubles the time required.

Tools. Guarding or purifying magicians requires oils or potions for each. Guarding or purifying the space require candles, diagrams or smoke to fill it. Opening the way requires an arcane connection to the recipient of the power. Fixing the terms requires a symbol of what is to be done. Closing the way requires a symbolic weapon.

If the power invoked by a ritual is an intelligent spirit, a clean success is needed to avoid some additional price being demanded. Offering a sacrifice adds +1 to a ritual roll to deal with a spirit, or +2 if the sacrifice is extremely dear.

fantastic journeys, powered by BIRG

This is a hack of TFT and, to a lesser extent, GURPS. The main novelties are in the readiness/experience rules and in the injury and recovery rules. It's not quite complete, there's no list of skills or special abilities, but I think it's enough to share. Use your favorite list of skills and make up abilities if you want.

Characters have three attributes:

• Dexterity (DX), used for physical rolls
• Strength (ST), used for endurance and overpowering
• Wits (WT), used for mental rolls.

Human characters have a minimum of 8 in each attribute.

Characters succeed at difficult tasks if a roll of 4d is less than or equal to their adjusted attribute. If they have a skill specific to the task, they roll 3d instead. A roll of 4 or less always succeeds, even if the attribute is adjusted to lower than this.

If two characters are directly opposed, they both make rolls. If both would succeed, the character with the higher roll does. On an exact tie, or if both fail, they are in a deadlock.

3eish: bones

Alright, without further ado here is the mechanical skeleton of my 3eish rules. This does not include any character options or combat-specific rules, other than a brief description of how attacks work. It also doesn't include rules for equipment, adventuring hazards or any kind of magic or special abilities. It is literally just the resolution and injury/endurance parts of the system.

"target 20" modern

This is an idea I've had for some time. It's a silly idea, but that's rarely stopped me before. Back in high school I played a lot of d20 Modern, at least until my friends and I collectively realized that the game was kind of a mess and d20-system combat and character creation was majorly in the way of the way we actually wanted to play.

This is an attempt to strip as much of the cruft from that game while leaving parts of it recognizable. A lot of the mechanical inspiration here is due to the Target 20 system on the one hand and UVG's SEACAT system on the other. Revisiting d20 Modern I was struck by how many fiddly mechanical choices there are, in the forms of talents and feats and skills and advanced classes, and how little most of that stuff matters. Most abilities boil down to a small modifier on certain saving throws or skills checks. I only bothered importing interesting rules as Target 20 Modern's talents.

exploding statline

rule

to generate a standard six-stat line with each stat ranging from 0 to 5:

1. roll six d6; for each die that shows a 1, mark one stat down as 0 and set those dice aside.
2. re-roll the remaining dice; for each die that shows a 1 or a 2, mark a remaining stat down as 1 and set those dice aside.
3. re-roll the remaining dice; for each die that shows a 1, 2 or 3, mark a remaining stat down as 2 and set those dice aside.
4. ...and so on.

repeat, increasing the threshold, until either no dice remain or it is impossible to keep going (that is, if you would have to roll higher than a 6).

why?

if bonuses from skill range from 0 (unskilled) to 5 (expert) and bonuses from circumstance range from 8 (easiest task that could be failed) to 0 (hardest task that could succeed), then a Target-20-style core mechanic of d20 + stat + skill + circumstance such that a roll of 1 always fails and a roll of 20 alwasy succeeds.

to my mind this is a pretty good balance of character ability and circumstance. also, this kind of exploding roll is fun.

but...what are the probabilities?

the most likely stat values to be generated are 1 or 2, followed by 3, 0, 4 and distantly by 5. the exact frequencies are:

0	16.67%
1	27.78%
2	27.78%
3	18.52%
4	15.43%
5	3.09%

75.5% of six-stat lines rolled with this method will total 9 or more, and 72% will total 12 or less. the probability that the highest score rolled will be the given number is given in the following table

0	46,656 to 1 ≈ 0%
1	0.77%
2	13.42%
3	41.63%
4	35.27%
5	8.91%

orthogonal checks

being a way to overload x-in-6 chances.

rule

At regular intervals (night or turn) roll a check with a canny die and an uncanny die (of different colors):

• Keyed but uncertain events (a guard hearing noises, a trap being sprung, a creature being in its lair) occur if their number appears on the uncanny die.
• Adventurers have a base 1-in-6 chance to succeed in something chancey (climbing, forcing doors, swimming, etc), to which bonuses can be added from their type or because of their stats. They succeed if the canny die shows that chance or lower.
• In the underworld, a random encounter occurs if the dice show doubles. In the over-world, this occurs if the doubles shown are less than or equal to the area's encounter rate. 

why?

Suppose there's an elf blissfully unaware that they share a room with a hidden trap and a secret passage. There's a:

• 2-in-6 chance they notice the passage
• 2-in-6 chance they spring the trap
• 1-in-6 chance that they encounter a wandering monster

 One could overload this chance on a single d6 in the following way:

1. Trap sprung
2. Trap sprung
3. Passage noticed
4. Passage noticed
5. Wandering monster
6. Nothing happens

There's nothing wrong with this. But it gets strange if the elf starts actively searching. Their chance to find the passage goes up to 4-in-6, and suddenly there's no more room on your d6.

You could at this point roll twice, once for the search and once for the trap/wandering monster. But that changes the behavior. Now it's possible to find the passage and have the trap sprung where previously those were separate outcomes.

Why should the trap and the wandering monster be linked, or the trap and the searching? Why not have three independent checks? That gives us eight possible outcomes rather than the four we had with single d6 overloading.

One reason not to is that rolling more dice potentially gives away the information that there's something to find. That's probably fine in some methods of play. But it also adds complexity to the checks that need to happen.

My preference is to always make the same roll for checks: 2d6 of different colors. Conveniently, the odds of rolling doubles are 1-in-6, the odds of wandering monsters in the dungeon. Although evidently odds were greater in cities and some wilderness environs in early editions, my inclination is that wilderness encounters should be less frequent on the whole than underworld ones. (Hence the encounter rate modification.)

A last consideration should be mentioned:

• If the canny die triggers on a low roll and the uncanny one on a high roll (or vise versa), then the two can occur together but not together with random encounters.
• If the canny and uncanny dice trigger both on low or both on high, then a random encounter will usually coincide with one if it also coincides with the other.

Of these, the first seems better to my mind. A random encounter can coincide with an unexpected twist or with a bit of progress, but not all three together, unless one is more likely than not.