tl;dr, I'm designing a solo engine built around asking a ton of questions that I'll soon put into randm solo.
https://bobloblawssolologblog.blogspot.com/2017/04/solo-engine-mechanics.html
https://bobloblawssolologblog.blogspot.com/2017/04/solo-engine-mechanics.html
Wow, that's a lot of questions. You're right, limiting the number of And/But type answers would be good in your case.
ReplyDeleteWhat if you had 2 dice, one giving a straight yes/no answer, and another determining whether or not there is complications. So a d6, 3- = no, 4+ = yes. Then a d10, complicated answers on a roll of 10, and the odds of complicated answers increase each roll, so the 2nd is against a 9 or better, the 3rd roll the target becomes 8, etc.
Craig Vial I thought about single dice but I like the frequency and amplitude of multiple states for yes and no. Your idea on escalation might work for me if I switch that d10 to a d30 or a 2d20. I'd still be escalating about every 4-5 rolls on a d10.
ReplyDeleteI'm calling this question engine 'randm questions' for now, I'm not sure if I'll think of anything snappy to call it. I didn't add code for escalations, just made a note to escalate as part of the answer returned, with a few dice rolls to use to see how often things should escalate. that way, it should work as well for folks that like to escalate often as it does for folks that don't want to escalate too often.
ReplyDeleterandm solo has been updated to v0.9.4. also, Steven Lincoln, TSS Solo has been added. Enjoy!
I wonder if it's not so much a case of the frequency of complicated (rich?) answers, as of there being times when it's more or less appropriate to have those kinds of answers, and times when you really just need a quick yes or no then move on.
ReplyDeleteHow do you know, what you need, though? And would you lose some of the unpredictability of these games if you could choose that? A difficult one. It may be easier to solve with a mechanic designed to play a particular game or scenario, rather than the more generic approach we usually see in GM emulators.
Craig Vial, that's a good question. In terms of rich answers, the way I'm interpreting it is that generally the answers come in two parts:
ReplyDeleteone, the combination of boolean true or false states, usually converted to yes and no since we're humans and not robots, like (yes / no / yes but no / no but yes / yes, and yes / no, and no) plus any uncertain states (yes if yes / no if no / yes if no / no if yes / possibly yes / possibly no ),
and then two, an escalation (add an npc, remove one, things go well, things go poorly, scene change, scene alteration, etc.).
I think it's escalations, the random twists / complications / scene changes, and how often they happen. I think the various boolean states are good, and if escalation states happen as the result of a question, the question-based escalation rate is what I want to tweak.
For now, I don't know for sure what I want or need, knowledge of that will probably only happen by playtesting the system and seeing what I like best. I definitely want the system to accomodate escalations and a bit of choice for how often they should happen based on the rate at which they ask questions.
For example, I can envision a settings area where some advanced settings could go. To take so1um for example, I could imagine where someone could change so1um settings to change escalations from their current 1:1 rate to a 1:6 rate or a 1:10 rate. That could potentially accommodate someone that asked 10 questions where someone else might only ask one, allowing various play styles to flourish. The solo roleplayer is going to know more about their personal style than the person designing the solo engine.
Mike Overbo that all makes sense to me, for sure. A generic tool that you might use with lots of different games would want to be highly customisable, though that will likely make it more complex.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking more going in the other direction, smaller, highly focused games. Using something like A Doomed Pilgrim by Vincent Baker as a starting point. I've got a few other things I want to do first, though.
I look forward to seeing what you come up with!
awesome -- I hadn't heard of "a doomed pilgrim", but it turns out that i've bought a few of Lumpley's games, just not that one. I look forward to seeing your stuff too!
ReplyDeleteHave you thought it isn't the yes and etc that is the problem, but what you do with the and/but. How about and "a smell" or and "a feeling" or but "a premonition" etc.
ReplyDeleteThat's a definite possibility -- I may mess around with that option. For the most part, while interpreting engine results, i want to keep the control of how to interpret the Boolean results in the control of the solo-er.
ReplyDeleteAdding an interpretation table for those and/but results can always be interpreted by an oracle or random table, which is how I would probably test it. I might add your ideas to the escalation table though...