Ok, it’s been a hot minute since the last update but Wrenegade Studios finally let me out of the underground bunker where they’ve been keeping me chained up working hard on the mechanics…
**Ring Ring** Sorry, one second please…
Hi… ok… yep… sure… thanks then, by-eee.
Having just been informed by the legal team (who are definitely real and not just a narrative device to create a disclaimer for my borderline slanderous claim above), the real reason it has been quiet around here is just boring real life stuff… however, that doesn’t stop the development process wheels from turning.
More dice stuff… what more is there?
We’ve spoken before about the way in which the dice will be assigned to a character’s abilities and how the progression of those abilities will make characters more likely to succeed at their chosen tasks.
However, there will be times when external factors or third parties will affect the outcome and we wanted to be able to cater to that without adding too much additional mental arithmetic or complexity to the overall system.
Currently, this is broken into two distinct options:
Upgrade/downgrade When a character has an external pressure or boon to their action there will be the chance that a roll will be upgraded or downgraded. This follows the same progression track as mentioned in the previous dice related DevBlog (or regression for a downgrade!). The causes for this could be situational, environmental or through direct opposition. Characters may even have a talent or item that grants access to this mechanic (more on those in the near future).
Assistance When a character isn’t acting alone, there is a need to reflect the benefit that may bring to an action. Conversely, help from the wrong source could even be a detriment… yet, even the most incompetent of helpful intentions can pay off sometimes and we wanted to capture that potential.
When a pair of characters (or more) engage in the same action with the express intention of collaboration the assistance mechanic will come into play. Each player will roll the check based on their own character’s abilities, however, the highest result from this pool is the one that will be used, making it possible for a d4 roll to trump a d20 in some cases. In addition to that, the character with the highest number of ranks in the applicable skill adds those to the result regardless of whether their roll was the highest of the pool.
Entities are people too… well, sort of…
We’ve talked a lot about players, characters and the world that they will interact with but we are missing a key component in this paranormal investigation game… the entities themselves.
There will be a much more detailed DevBlog on these at some point in the future but as part of this discussion… monologue… lecture… rant(?) it is worth mentioning that the entities will also have the same abilities and dice distribution as a player’s character does. The meaning of those abilities will, however, have different meanings. The intention here is to keep things consistent across PCs and NPCs and allow for opposed checks to be easy to define even for things that might fall outside of the obvious game mechanics because, as anyone who has ever run a TTRPG will tell you, players will be players!
Until next time…
