"Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

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Ragdollmaster
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"Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by Ragdollmaster » Fri Apr 30, 2010 8:18 pm

So, we haven't had a decent RP going on for the better part of a year. I remember one of the main issues of Wolfire's previous RPs (Post-Apocalypse, Modern Times, Lugaru RP, etc) is that there was no real way to control or regulate people's actions or than "NO GOD-MOD BLARHAGALGH".

Recently on Datarealms, I've participated in an RP game called "Roll To Dodge", where there is one regulator/game manager/dicemaster that rolls die to determine how successful each player's action is. Essentially, I would use an online dice generator to do the rolls; here's an example of one the rolls from my thread. The system we used was basically a character with three starting weapons and two starting abilities, which often contributed to certain rolls (eg "Female Gender = +1 to rolls involving sandwich making") The roll system was based on 1 to 6: 1 is a total fail, 2 is a fail, 3 is an average, 4 is a success, 5 is a perfect, 6 is an overshoot.
Ragdollmaster wrote:dragonxp (1) Advere struggles in his state of half-sleep to try and prevent himself from bleeding out, but the pain and blood loss overwhelm him and he subsides into fitful oblivion, with not much in the way of medical treatment accomplished. (HE'S STILL ALIVE)
Abilities
Assassination: +1 to rolls involving undetected kills or attacks
Stealth: +1 to rolls involving sneaking or moving slowly
Inventory
Silenced L9A1
Silenced Desert Eagle
Tactical Knife
First Aid Kit
Binoculars
Kevlar Body Armor
Stolen Sandwich
Exploding L9A1 Bullets
Conditions
Poison (will die next turn if left untreated)

Hyperkultra (1+1 = 2) Fiona reaches for her railgun, intending to point it at Damien, but she fumbles with the familiar device. Panic sets in and she's barely able to point it at Damien at hip-level, a fairly inaccurate position.
Abilities
Electronics Expert: +1 to rolls dealing with circuitry
Weapon Specialist: +2 to rolls using Railgun Sniper -1 when using other weapons
Inventory
Portable Microfusion Generator (backpack)
Satchel of standard electronic components
Rotor + Housing
Lithium-Ion Battery
Electric Motor
Servos
Modular Structural pieces
Two empty sacks

Benpasko (2+1 = 3) Ben rushes over to Mathis, but then realizes he can't really do much in the way of medicine. However, he does still look sweet, so he's able to give Mathis some reasurance.
Abilities
Herbalism: +1 to rolls involving identifying or using the properties of plants
Weak: -1 to rolls involving lots of endurance or physical strength
Inventory
Double-Barreled Shotgun
Flare Gun
Machete
Shovel
Vials
Rope

Ociamarru (3) Mathis gropes at his leg, trying to stop the spread of poison, but he can't really do anything significant without a tourniquet or something to stop the flow of blood. The poison is spreading quickly but he tries to relax- if he panics and his heart beats faster, the poison will travel even quicker.
Abilities
CQC: +1 to rolls involving close quarters actions
Light Step: +1 to rolls involving stealth or sneaking
Inventory
Mossberg 535
Walther P99
Machete

Ragdollmaster (4) Damien scowls as he drops to one knee and puts his rifle's scope up to his eye. He watches Fiona scramble for her railgun briefly before she levels it at him- hip-level for her is head-level for him, in this position. She doesn't look like she has a very accurate shot, but the sight of the enormous railgun makes him hesitate a little. He doesn't want to take any chances. He begins to slowly back away, M14 still leveled at Fiona. Some spare soldiers who are milling around have moved off to the side, guns pointing every which-way, at Fiona, at Damien, even at Eric and Mathis- he wants to distance himself from the group. Long-distance combat is his niche specialty, after all!
Abilities
Marksman: +1 to rolls involving long-range combat
First-Aid: +1 to rolls involving healing actions
Inventory
M14EBR w/ 10x telescopic sight
Mk23 (USSOCOM variant) w/ laser guide
Bowie Knife
Rations
2 Flares
Kevlar Armor

caekdaemon (5) Bob Jameson Jones stumbles towards a med-tent, dizzy from poison. He finds a medic inside. "I've been bitten by a snake," he says, giving a rough description. The medic grunts and runs over to the sorted, categorized shelves before pulling out a vial of antivenom and a needle. "Hold still!" He injects the antivenom into Bob's bloodstream. It stings terribly, but he's able to finally relax. "You'll probably make it," the medic says as he cleans the injection site.
Abilities
Mechanical Engineering: +1 to rolls involving mechanics
Unconventional Weapons: +1 to rolls using unique/strange weapons
Inventory
Harpoon Gun
Beretta 92FS
Screwdriver
Toolkit
Flashlight
Backpack
3 Adrenaline Needles (Strength)
3 Amphetamine Needles (Energy)
Conditions
Weakened Poison - 5 turns (if you roll a 1 in the next five turns, you'll die. Best stick to using your Mech. Engineering and Unconventional Weapons perks so you get a guaranteed "2")
More examples of actions/rolls: Hyperkultra's Original RTD; My Spin-Off RTD.

So: would anyone be interested in playing a dice-based RP? It would be pretty similar to the previous RPs, but instead of deciding exactly what you do, you just give your action. These games have proven to be great fun on Datarealms (with almost 150 pages in the original!) and they go along much more comprehensively than the old, text-only RPs. They're also much more fair when it comes to PvP, deaths, combat, and the like.

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Endoperez
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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by Endoperez » Sat May 01, 2010 1:58 am

In the Giant In The Playground forums (GiantITP), they have a dice macro that generates a random number when a dice is given in a correct format. That's a handy system.

[roll]1d6[/roll] can give you:
(1d6)[1]
(1d6)[4]
(1d6)[6]
and so on.

[roll]2d6[/roll] can give you (2d6)[7]

[rollv]3d6[/rollv] gives you (3d6)[5][3][5](13)



Wushu Open could be a handy system for you. Basically, whatever players say is WHAT HAPPENS. If you say you kill two dozen mooks, you do. Then you roll the dice to see how well it worked (based on a system of traits somewhat like what you described) - if you roll poorly, more mooks come in, or the ones left are affected by the inverse ninja law, or whatever else the players decribe next. Or the boss's "health" didn't go down yet, despite him losing his hand. Or his head. Then you'd better get creative with alternate forms! :lol:

EVERYONE has the right to veto. If someone does something that doesn't fit the style accepted. Say, players can veto the fact that you killed the boss with your first hit, so you instead change "killed" to "cleaved his arm right off".

Character generation is basically what you had, except a bit more codified. Each character has three Traits and one Weakness. Batman might havethe Traits: Detective, Rich Man's Toys, Vengeance of the Night; and a Weakness of No one dies on my watch. Detective for finding information, Toys for having the exact thing that will help in the exact moment, and Vengeance for fighting. "No one dies" means he can be distracted by the villains throwing some mooks over the roof (Batsy has to dive in and save them, most probably leaving him vulnerable).
Or he could have the traits Bruce for being charismatic and suave playboy (mostly out of suit), Ninja Training for combat and disappearing acts, and Allies for Alfred and Babs and others sending in info, or the batmobile arriving just in the nick of time, or whatever.

The two builds would work differently, because their strenghts are divided a bit differently. Also, the Weakness adds a lot.

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Ragdollmaster
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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by Ragdollmaster » Sat May 01, 2010 8:20 am

We have had some weaknesses added in lately, and the game's gotten a lot more complex :P We're up to 12 players instead of 6 (6 protagonists, 6 antagonists) there's NPCs on both sides, and two groups of NPCs hostile to everyone.

I can see where Weakness would add some flavor/character to the players; I'll see about inserting it if this ever gets rolling. For actions, we used the Declare system, where players declare their actions/purposes and the GM decides how well it goes based on the dice roll. For instance;

>Take a swing at the soldier!

(1) Taking a swing at the soldier, you completely miss and your arm swings past. You can feel your shoulder-blade disconnect from the unstopped force, and the soldier returns your attack with a rifle butt upside the head!
Condition
Dislocated shoulder-blade (-2 to any arm related action)

(2) You try and punch the soldier in the face, but he intercepts your undisciplined attack and throws you onto your back!

(3) Concentrating, you punch the soldier square in the face. His helmet protects him and he only staggers back a few inches, but it's a successful attack.

(4) You step forward and slam into the soldier with your fist, sending him reeling back about two feet and leaving him dazed.

(5) Putting your absolute best effort into it, you put monstrous energy behind your fist and crush into the soldier, throwing him clean off his feet and knocking him out.

(6) You hurl your fist at the soldier's face, connecting cleanly, but hitting him so hard that you feel your fingers bend and snap.
Condition
Broken fingers (-1 to any arm related action)

If that clears anything up :v

So; any takers? It seems complicated, sure, but all you really have to do is declare an action and I'll handle everything else.

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invertin
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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by invertin » Sat May 01, 2010 9:23 am

I remember doing something like this on another forum, but it allowed things that made no sense and were physically impossible.

E.G I grow a pair of wings.

2- You have a pair of useless limbs sticking out of your back. They just make you look really freaky.

(-2 to rolls involving persuading people)

It was pretty light-hearted and nonsensical.

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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by Ragdollmaster » Sat May 01, 2010 9:44 am

That's what the first RTD Game was like; I encouraged players in mine to stick in the realm of realism and improbability. To quote from my OP:
Ragdollmaster wrote:It'll be slightly more realistic (than the other RP) in the sense that we won't be going far beyond the bounds of possibility, so attempting to grow a third arm or spontaneously gain the power of flight is probably out of the question. However, attempting to construct a cybernetic third limb or fashioning together a jetpack from scrap metal is not out of the question if you roll a 5 and have the right materials ;)


We can do either one, a "zomfg" RP or a "srs" RP- it's equally fun to manage either one, in my opinion :D

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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by TheBigCheese » Sat May 01, 2010 4:36 pm

I'd be in if it's realistic-based and has an interesting setting.

Though I don't exactly understand the dice rolls. Would I post an action, and then you would replay with the roll? Or am I expected to do it myself?

And would you only be able then to do a single action per post? In my opinion things would move pretty slow if that happened.

The dice roll forum format seemed like a good idea.

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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by Ragdollmaster » Sat May 01, 2010 5:03 pm

TheBigCheese wrote:Would I post an action, and then you would replay with the roll? Or am I expected to do it myself?
No. You post the action, and then I roll; depending on how good the roll is, I'll post either a negative or positive reaction. You make the cause, I make the effect :)
TheBigCheese wrote:And would you only be able then to do a single action per post? In my opinion things would move pretty slow if that happened.
A single major action, yes. We would want to avoid something like "Pole-vault over the plane, fire the rocket launcher at the dragon, do a barrel-roll into Senor McMuffin, eat a ration to restore health, and throw knife at terrorist. Oh also can I magically make a new gun thanks." It doesn't move along nearly as slow as you might think- it's actually very fast-paced if all of the participants are active.
TheBigCheese wrote:The dice roll forum format seemed like a good idea.
The Wushu Open thing? This seems too similar to Wolfire's old format (eg you decide how well the action went) If you can pick and choose what you want to be successful and unaffected by the roll, well, where's the challenge? Even with the whole vetoing system it could easily be abused. I'd feel a bit uncomfortable using that system :|

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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by zoidberg rules » Sun May 02, 2010 8:00 am

invertin wrote:it allowed things that made no sense and were physically impossible.

E.G I grow a pair of wings.
at an improbability value of 5 to the power of 6,500,326 to 1 against

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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by Endoperez » Sun May 02, 2010 9:05 am

Ragdollmaster wrote:
TheBigCheese wrote:
TheBigCheese wrote:The dice roll forum format seemed like a good idea.
The Wushu Open thing? This seems too similar to Wolfire's old format (eg you decide how well the action went) If you can pick and choose what you want to be successful and unaffected by the roll, well, where's the challenge? Even with the whole vetoing system it could easily be abused. I'd feel a bit uncomfortable using that system :|
EVERYTHING you describe is affected by the rolls. However, it ALSO happens just as you describe it.
If you're going against a group of ninja mooks, you can kill ten of them every turn. The thing is, there's MORE until you also roll a success. Wushu lets you DESCRIBE what you want, the thing is, that doesn't mean you SUCCEED. You describe the death of dozen enemies, but the threat is still the same. The mooks only run out of once there's enough successes, as the DICE decide.

The point is to be like an action movie, and in those, some of the heroes often die. However, the players also get to describe their own deaths. They can have just as epic of a death as they decide to, taking dozen mooks with them.

Here's an excerpt from the rules.
When the ninjas start jumping out of the woodwork, assign the whole lot of them a Threat Rating. (You can also assign them to non-human challenges like ticking time bombs, collapsing buildings, treacherous climbs, and so on.) The exact value depends on how many players you have, your dice pool limit, and how long you want the scene to last.
...
As you may have guessed, each Yang success your players bring to bear reduces the Threat Rating by 1. When it reaches zero, the mooks are either all dead or running in abject terror. Conversely, you shouldn’t let players describe taking out the whole group before the Threat gets close to zero. If such a thing does happen, and there’s some Threat remaining after the dice are rolled, you’ll have to bring in some reinforcements or let previously beaten mooks get up for another round.


http://wiki.saberpunk.net/Wushu/Combat

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Ragdollmaster
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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by Ragdollmaster » Sun May 02, 2010 10:53 am

Well, I'll definitely consider it, but still, I don't know what kind of story people would like yet- a more serious RP would be much more fitting for Wushu Open than a lighthearted, silly, "make my ass fire dark matter" RP. Not to mention it might be confusing for players that haven't used it before- a simple one-action declare system is much more quickly learned than Wushu Open. It seems to me that, in the WO system, you choose your action(s), then a reaction(s), and then for every reaction there's a subsidiary reaction :S It's kind of over-the-top, in my opinion.

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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by Endoperez » Sun May 02, 2010 12:57 pm

There's no need for reactions, because what the other person said HAPPENED. :D Say, on your turn you brought three zombies down with a flying kick that broke the neck of one, followed by a shotgun blasts to the faces of two others. On my turn, I describe how other zombies come in to attack you, but I charge in behind you with my pistol and cutlass, cut down the zombies closing in on you just as they scored a scratch on your arm, and pull you on your feet while trying to keep the rest of the zombies at bay.

On my action, I described something that happened to you. Your action probably used more aggressive and less defensive dice than mine, but if we both happened to get the same amount of successes, we'd both have brought the end of the encounter one step closer. If you wanted, you could veto any detail. However, that could TOTALLY happen in a zombie movie, so I doubt you would.

This only works if everyone has the same idea of what it's going to be like. People might agree that other players' characters are NOT wounded on their actions, or that you need to PM another player before you can use his character. Or that one person decides to be the bad-lucked guy, and he gets hurt ALL the time and is the punch of ALL the slapstick humour.

It takes a certain amount of TRUST. Face-to-face with a group of friends, I'd expect it to work wonderfully. Online, it COULD be problematic, if only because "veto" takes longer.

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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by invertin » Sun May 02, 2010 2:06 pm

Personally, I prefer "I try doing this" "You rolled a 2 so you failed" rather than "I do this" "You rolled a 2 so you did that thing but it doesn't matter anyway"

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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by Ragdollmaster » Sun May 02, 2010 2:18 pm

Argh, it's way too complex for my liking. It would be fine if, like you said, you did it face-to-face with a group of friends, but online it just seems... blargh. Plus, it seems that most people (in this case, myself and invertin) prefer the simpler system, so I don't think I'll be using it.

But, it does seem very interesting. Maybe you could start your own RP using this system, since you seem very passionate about it :)

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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by Endoperez » Sun May 02, 2010 3:15 pm

Ragdollmaster wrote:But, it does seem very interesting. Maybe you could start your own RP using this system, since you seem very passionate about it :)
I'm not that passionate about it, really, I just felt it did the thing you gave as an example better. I do think it's better example than most, and being free is a plus.

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Re: "Roll To Dodge" Role-Play

Post by Ragdollmaster » Mon May 03, 2010 6:10 pm

Hmm, well, while it may play out superior in the end, again, I think the process is a bit heavy for me :lol: Even if I do a serious RP, I'd rather keep all of the administrative stuff down to a minimum so that we can have fun with the story instead of worrying about minor details and whatnot.

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