Random idea of the day: dice are chaos, unpredictability, entropy. Entropy is to be opposed with creation. Against the Entropy, a tiny roleplaying game in which characters oppose the fundamental part of universe represented by die rolls. An antagonistic relationship, checks are made to overcome the dice rolled to make the checks.
Mechanically, I suppose you have a parameter and you have to roll below it to succeed. Which is not a novel mechanic, but a different feeling behind it.
Interesting. I've played with something similar, and I guess it's appropriate. Dice are agents of entropy. They're not a thing in and off themselves. But it's a question of who controls your fate. You, or dice.
So yeah, you should be able to grab more dice for greater risk and greater reward.
It's not so much about mechanics so far, but the theme of it. You can't escape dice-as-entropy as the rules tell you to roll dice. But by making entropy-as-dice the villain, we change the relationship between player and rules, the story of it. How often have you exclaimed "Dice hate me today?" Well, what if they really do. And you get to fight back! Somehow. Random ideas are, in fact, random.
Entropy grows. Steal a bit from DRYH, where dice pools of Madness and Exhaustion grow? Hmm. Yeah. This could be a DRYH hack.
So. Pile of dice in the middle of the table, representing the state of decay of the PCs' world. Whenever you do anything of import, roll them all. Each die that comes up 3 or less is a success (modified target number based on how much time/effort/whatever is expended?) Each die that comes up a 6 adds another die to the pile. Entropy grows. GM can burn dice to power mean moves (which of course spurs heroes to do more things, rolling more dice, etc.)
Tempting to not have a GM. Just let players come up with ways to reduce entropy via catastrophes. But GMless games are very tricky.
IIRC some of the WH40K games' skills work like this: your skill points are within the 1-100 range. To succeed at a skill, you roll a d% and have to score below your score in that skill. Being more skilled increases that range: a person with 40 points in a skill is going to succeed roughly twice as often as someone with 20 points.
@JonathanHobbs Oh, nonsense. When I was their age they would toss me into a volcano twice a week and I never complained. Built character, it did!
But now it's all "oh, no, I'm on fire, oh, the agony, it's terrible", and "ahh, my soul is being devoured by the Ancient Ones". Bloody whiners, I tell you.
I thought we were doing epic things when we fought a half Minotaur half Medusa thing then we fought three dragons, a pit fiend and a balor all at once. THEN we killed the king of Crete and one of our members is now the queen of Crete and we are all advisers for her.
they did make it to the final fight, despite during part 2 of the run spawning in separate rooms which had all the other baddies they could have fought and fighting an owl bear, 2 balgras, a flash golem, and an ooze monster that made a minion of itself whenever it was hit by a weapon attack. (all size large except the minions)
So I am running a hell realm game for our characters after death. They are supposed to escape hell and then be reincarnated(Holy crap I spell that right the first try). I am thinking of running a dark souls like game where if they die they respawn at checkpoints losing the currency they have until they get back.
@JoshuaAslanSmith So far our group has enjoyed the very challenging encounters we have faced in life so I thought I would make it more so sense we are already dead. I might nerf the monsters if they do not enjoy the idea.
well you know in Dark Souls that if you die while trying to get your stuff back its gone, forever, and refighting the same stuff to get there has a strong, immediate tension, but it might be a challenge to replicate it. Im sure from a mechanics standpoint its doable, but I'm just cautioning you that it might not turn out feeling like how you'd imagine
@JoshuaAslanSmith I know. I am not going to do the if you die twice it's all gone thing. I might make it a fraction like 3/4 or something though just so there is some tension.
@JoshuaAslanSmith Yes, there are certainly no rules against discussing moba here. But I (and I think correctly) Assumed he thought this was a chat room for moba. Where moba is not really an RPG.
@inbarrose to be fair I was playing similar game modes in other strategy games from around the same era, convergent design, its just warcraft III was one of the most popular games and DOTA one of the most popular mods
Aeon of Strike was the first "MOBA" type game, but it had 3 teams in a triangle, where the outer tracks each went to a different team, and the central track also had a central split point, if you controlled the center, your troops that arrived there duplicated and then went forth each to the other 2 teams.
The MOBA style itself is based off of the classic arena "footmen frenzy" or "footmen wars" etc... that spawned many adaptions of their own.... And this is something originally found in Age of Empires 2 mods.
DOTA is really about knowing the characters and who is best against whom, whereas LOL has basically every character hewing toward a few archetypes and the game is really more about the metagame/teamwork than one character being better against the other
Rampart was a game where you had to defend your castle, and each round you had to prepare your base in defense, which included towers, but also other things. and the game is from 1990, so not very advanced....
@inbarrose disregarding an earlier precursor as not being the originator simply because it was not as popular or advanced, doesn't mean it didnt influence those who came to make later iterations on the idea
