I love how in Horrified the monsters you fight against perform the skill check and when you fight back you simply spend any of the items you have picked up, the same items you use to complete the puzzles to defeat the monsters.
Second comment, but it feels separate, as someone who playing and runs a lot of RPG's, the idea of not just failing and then having nothing come form it, but instead you still get something, it feels like what is known as in RPG's as "failing forward". Where it's level of success, much like Near and Far, you can succeed by a bit or by a lot. But the idea is that you will succeed, but depending on how well you succeed, things might happen. So when something bad happens on a roll, for picking a lock, for example, you always unlock it because we need to move forward into that room, because that's where the story goes, but a low roll means that the goblin on the other side of the door won't be surprised, so you lose some benefit. Or maybe you roll so poorly that you don't pick the lock, but it alerts the goblin who opens the door and now they get to surprise you, so yes, there is failure, but you can have three different levels, and the story always moves forward.
This video is exactly what I needed. I'm working on a game that's somewhere between Call to Adventure and Near and Far. The biggest challenge I come across is ending up with waaay too many icons and symbology. Between identifying challenge types, terrain types, card types, etc. I end up with a ton of icons that I think makes a big barrier to entry. Text could resolve this, but unfortunately it's not as eye-catching for quick reference, and then card orientation becomes a big battle as well (I'm fine reading cards upside down, but I know some people are very against it). The immediate thought is to reduce the symbols, but then the 'story' of the game becomes more narrow, and I really want to capture the feel of an evocative world. I haven't played Call to Adventure, but it seems like they found a nice line between creating story and being user-friendly. Best of luck on your efforts, Jamie. Really appreciate these videos.
I'm glad it came at a good time for you, Wiliam! I think you're wise to keep an eye on the overhead resulting from the number of icons. My video on Thursday talked more in depth about the skill tests in Call to Adventure (and I'm sure there are other videos that are better at explaining it).
@@PurpleMoose23 Haha I'm flattered, but it's very much in the "scribbled on bits of paper" state. Keep an eye out for it on store shelves in 2021 (or as soon as a publisher realizes how brilliant it is, hehe).
Alway appreciate your nuance in pros and cons of design decisions. A couple things came to mind for me. You mentioned already in a reply to another comment that you forgot Robinson Crusoe's pay with critical resources for certainty. That and your archer example makes me think of something akin to DnD's concentration requirement for some effects. Just like in real life, the full benefit of a skill requires giving up focus/time/ability in some other challenge -- sometimes we spend all our energy to perfect something even if we are highly skilled in the area and then other times we half-ass things we are good at and hope it's good enough. Poker's balance between pushing luck in hoping certain cards are drawn, skill and knowledge of probabilities, and bluffing skill does a good job of presenting options for players to balance between gaining more or less by affecting the size of the pot. Sometimes the sure thing is to push everyone out to win a smaller pot and sometimes deciding to take risks is desired.
To get another data point, card skill tests in Lord of the Rings: Journeys In Middle earth. Not the only game that does this but pull X number of cards off of deck where X= character’s value in that skill. Cards have success icons on a percentage of cards in the deck. In this specific game there are also fate icons that allow you to spend inspiration which is a universal currency to get another success. it’s the same system as Manson’s of madness without dice. Neat thing is that the cards are multi-use with usually the best skills having the success symbol on it. Makes for a hard choice of taking that card out of the deck and changing your odds for its special ability. Also this system lets you scout x number of cards which means draw that many cards from your custom deck and put them back in any order and even bottom deck them to better your odds. Love these vids. Thanks and can’t wait to see where this lands with you and your game! I’m glad you are not always looking for what works, but also what’s most fun as well!
I don't know if any game has this (there probably is), but a less binary system seems like an interesting ideia, like: Instead of either failing or accomplishing the task, the system could be graded. You would be able to: fail, fail partially, succeed or succeed masterfully (just an example). So the player has to make the skill test but only knows the skill required (Strengh for instance) and doesn't know the actual number of successes needed for it. To spice things up you could make it so that the player still can't know what grade he got, so he doesn't know if he failed or not, only the outcome of his actions (this could be accomplished by someone else reading the skill test for the player). The good thing about this system is that you'll probably succeed (so you won't waste your turn) but there might be some unforseen consequences and you might not even know that you failed.
Love your videos and games. Thanks for these! In terms of skill check systems, one system you might think about is the Fate rpg system. Characters have "aspects" (short descriptions of traits, background, relationships, et cetera that could have positive or negative effects in different situations: "orphaned street urchin" or "obsessively ethical"). They also have skills (how good are you at, for example, riding a horse, which would be an issue in a horse race or fighting on a horse). Skills are tuned to the setting for the game (sci-fi? hacking becomes a skill, etc.). On a skill check, a threshold number for success is set, the skill is picked and gives a numerical bonus, and the player rolls four dice ("fudge dice") with pluses, minuses, and blanks. The dice modify the skill level and you see if you succeed (in a "contested" check, like a fight, the two sides roll against one another to see who succeeds). You succeed if your total is higher than the threshold. But there are a couple wrinkles. First, players have "fate points" they can spend on checks to invoke an aspect which might have a bearing on the roll (adding 2 to the roll if their aspect makes them "fated" to do better at that sort of thing). Players can get more fate points during the session by agreeing to have negative things happen to their character because of their aspects (these negatives are supposed to open up interesting situations tied to who their character is that they then need to deal with as they pursue their goals). Second, There are four outcome types, which are applied differently depending on the situation. "Fail" can lead to getting something other than what you want or succeeding at great cost (using whatever resource seems applicable). The idea, as I understand it, is to have failures lead to new situations, not "nothing happens." In a board game, this could be an opportunity for player choice between something they didn't want and succeeding at great cost. "Tie" means getting a lesser version of what you wanted or what you want at minor cost (another possible choice). "Succeed" means you get what you want at no cost. And "Succeed with Style" leads to you getting what you want along with some other benefit (a third possible choice between benefits). Anyway, a bit long, but if you take the time, I hope it helps you in your creative process.
Matt: This is awesome! I appreciate you sharing the FATE system in detail. It seems to combine a few different ideas expressed in the video and the comments, which is great.
While this is much more applicable to RPGs, but I really enjoy the skill tests in Fantasy Flight's Star Wars games. The idea is that you have a dice pool with specialized dice that have differing amounts of successes and a second pool based on the difficulty with a particular amount of fails. You roll them together and you can easily cancel them out to see if you have more successes than fails. This is a pretty standard black and white skill test, but what makes it particularly fun is that there is a second set of symbols on the dice which are "advantages" and "disadvantages". Basically, you can succeed in a skill test, but if you have aggregate more disadvantage symbols, then the gamemaster assigns some kind of complication to your character after you succeed like, "You successfully shot the stormtrooper, but your gun has jammed and you cannot shoot again until you make a successful repair check". Similarly, you can fail a skill test, but gain an advantage which players are encouraged to describe themselves for gamemaster approval, like "Okay, my run check failed, but I got an advantage, so let's say I fell down behind a table while running and have a bonus to hiding as a result." It's a clever system in that it encourages players to join in creative storytelling. That doesn't work as well for the more rigid rules needed for board games, but while I was tinkering with a homebrew RPG system in the past, I had a system where you rolled your skill test with a dice pool and, yes you needed to pass a certain threshhold to succeed in a standard pass/fail. However, if you have a proficiency in that skill, upon failure, you're allowed to "lock" one (or more if you're further proficient) of your rolled dice and use if for the next roll in the same skill check. The idea behind it is that you're used to these kinds of situations so as you learn the context of this particular skill check and so you have an advantage on future rolls. In that sense, your turn isn't wholly wasted. Your attempt learned you something about the attempt and your (hopefully high number) locked dice represents what you learned which you can use to improve future attempts. Another way of doing this that I eventually gave up due to heavy bookkeeping, is that players roll skill checks and even if they fail, they retain their whole value of their skill roll which they can apply to the same exact skill check the next time around. The idea behind it being the same, but again, then players are writing down various numbers to track all their past attempts and I thought it was too confusing. Also, a way to incorporate the possibility of rare failure or success is to assign a special die (or multiple) that gives you a critical hit and fail on one of the faces each, the former is always a success regardless of the rest of your roll and the latter is always a failure. You could also assign other special features to the use of this special die that can affect the game or situation in other ways as well. I used a system like this in the homebrew, to represent the unpredictability of magic, but it could be used in other contexts.
One of the most interesting skill tests are the tests in the survival/horror RPG Dread. Every time the players have to check a skill they have to take a piece out of a jenga tower. The later into the adventure, the harder it gets to pass the test. It gives the GM a great way to give the story an interesting arc and tension.
Friday by Friedmann Friese is a solitaire game with some element of that Near and Far skill check, but it's much more interesting and it's a more central part of the game. It's a solo deck-builder where each turn you're presented with two different challenges and must choose which one to confront. The more difficult the challenge, the better the reward. The reward is to add the card to your deck, where it becomes something you can use against future challenges. If you don't succeed against the challenge, you can pay hearts to draw another card to add to your skill. Or, you can choose to deliberately fail the challenge, in which case you can "learn from your mistakes" and purge some of the weaker cards from your deck, becoming stronger in the future. It sounds like a variation of this might be helpful for your upcoming game since you're already planning on using cards for the skill check.
Something I REALLY like in skill tests is a scale of success, as opposed to a black and white pass/fail. That way, the stakes can be high, in that you KNOW aligning the the correct stats with the appropriate test will result in better rewards. But then at the other end, not hitting a threshold doesn't result in "FAIL: Nothing happens. Try again later" and instead leads to a different result that might not be considered as good. Creature escapes and moves elsewhere (which may or may not be good enough for what you're trying to accomplish). Maybe you're trying to gain an ally and by failing a diplomacy check, you get into a fight with them that ultimately allows you to get their stuff, instead of their help. So... you failed a test, but it shaped the experience and allowed you to adapt and either gain something in the end, or at least progress a sense of narrative so it doesn't feel like you just wasted a turn. My favorite choice of options (resembling skill tests) game ever is Tales of the Arabian Nights, which is like a super crazy version of Above and Below/Near and Far (or the book stuff of those games). In that game, there's an entire matrix of choices for interacting with certain situations, which is AWESOME. However, the end result of anything you do is pretty much random and not based on any stats or skills. I always think it would be cool to have a similar matrix where your character skills fit into it at different levels. Like, a fighter would have the highest chances of scoring well in a fight check, and the lowest chances of success in a diplomacy check, but there are middle things that allow players to kind of pick a balance between what the odds are and how they actually want to approach a situation/what they think will yield the best results given the context of the skill test in the narrative of the game. Not... exactly strictly skill test stuff there, but that's what I was thinking of the entire time I was watching the video.
As a simple, but somewhat interesting skill check is in Ticket to Ride for the Tunnels. The skill test could have a small range you that may require you to give up health or resources to pass if the test his higher by a random chance.
Another option, the skill check system in XCOM: The Board Game. Similar to Time Stories where you're trying to accumulate enough successes but with an added "Push your luck" element, as you can roll as many times as you want each turn, but every time you do it the difficulty increases, and if you fail you lose all your progress for that turn.
Arzaquel Anzures I also wanted to mention XCOM. There are a few interesting aspects. 1. You can both succeed and “fail” simultaneously. You do need a certain number of successes to pass the test, but the addition of the enemy die means that you can lose resources even if you pass the test. 2. The press your luck element is interesting, because you have the ability to accumulate successes over multiple rolls. But as you pointed out, each roll comes with a higher chance of losing your resources. 3. For the squad leader, he can adjust the chance of success by increasing the of soldiers committed to the test, by matching specialties between a soldier and the enemy, and/or by using an upgraded unit. And you can only upgrade the unit by not using it in combat during a round.
Brilliant video. Yeah its one aspect of games that is very intriguing and obviously in my own designs I've had to come up with different ways to do it. And i wonder sometimes with some of the designs is it a skill test I'm designing/implementing or a resolution economy.
I sure do appreciate your videos. Great thought provoking ideas and it helped me refine the skill checks in our game Dawnshade. I’m excited to see what you came up with it. 👍
@@jameystegmaier Thanks! We were hoping to launch Dawnshade May 19th but it's hard to say now with this global pandemic. (although Frosthaven sure isn't hurting haha) I didn't realize at first that this video was from a year ago. Have you officially announced the mystery game you were talking about?
I also like how Mansions if Madness (2nd Ed) has some skill checks where you don’t know the required number of successes. The app will track cumulative progress and it might take multiple player turns to pass the test. This gives some uncertainty as to whether to spend the clue tokens to convert clue symbols to successes. Wouldn’t work in every genre but but for a mystery type game it works.
How you describe the Near and Far system, with the ability to spend a resource (ex: hearts) to help overcome a failed skill check is similar to Arkham Horror (the precursor to Eldritch Horror). In Arkham Horror, you roll skill checks as you described for Eldritch Horror. Additionally, you can spend clue tokens - a precious resource - to add dice to your rolls. You can do so one at a time to try to pass a check that you are currently failing.
Very insightful as always, Jamey! Thanks! :) The skill test you described reminded me a bit of the one in Great Western Trail when you reach Kansas City and need certain different cows in order to make a successful delivery. But I think you could propose something similar to what Alexander Pfister did along the way to Kansas City, as he provides opportunities for players to spend their cards throughout the game in order to achieve certain benefits (which is kinda like a mini skill test), but knowing that might lead them to be less prepared for when the important skill test comes. What I mean is, if a player actually had over 6 skill as you said in your example, for example 2 cards with 2 skill and one with 3 skill, he could still choose the "talk" or "fight" options because he was afraid of discarding everything and get a lot of 1s, for example. And he rather saves the 3 skill card for a more important skill test. Hope this helps in some way! :)
I haven’t played it, but you might want to look at “Burning Wheel.” What I heard was that failing a skill check is the only way to improve your skill level. So a player might hope to fail at a skill check so they can get better at that skill.
Nice, I like that idea! It's a less abstract way of showing that your character has gained experience from the attempt, which improves their ability to do it again for all future attempts.
I like the simplicity of the 'Skill Checks' in Starfarers of Catan or Oracle of Delphi as they do not take over the game. In Oracle, you have 3 tasks which are defeating a monster. All monsters strength start as a 9 - your shields. You then roll a D10 - 0 get injury, meet the number or exceed, defeat the monster and gain an item. If you don't succeed, spend a a favor and roll again with the Monster's strength reduced as 1, etc. It is just quick and does not lead to wasting turns very much and when you do it is because you pushed your luck. So the Shields function as a skill check that you can pick up at various points in the game. Starfarers of Catan has a choose your own adventure novel aspect and a ship where you upgrade. The choices are often based on what parts of your ships and what kind of upgrades that you have that you may add to the randomizer to determine the result. Also there are exploration pogs that you can look at while you fly your ships by that may have a terraform rating or a combat rating (space pirate worlds, damn those pirates). If you have the correct number of upgrades you can place a colony there. The upgrades function as skill checks. They really are just called something different. I like both of these examples as they are quick and easy and don't bog the games down terribly. They add tension without your game being over if you miss just one skill check.
So T7C of course has after the fact mitigation, too (and other things that I probably shouldn't mention) *if* you have the right cards in hand or the right passive abilities, and some of the learnable skill of the game-as well as of levelling your character up in various ways-is in getting to the point that the resources that ‘happen’ to be available to you are the result of strategy rather than luck. I'm still busy being amazed at how this all manages to be quite ‘meta’ but simultaneously thematic. I also like the fact that T7C and Call to Adventure both actually slightly *reward* failure, to the point that in there are times when you might deliberately make a lame attempt at something where failure does not look too painful, because it's the consolation prize that you want. (There are also times in T7C where the direct consequences of failure are worth considering. Not all failure modes need be equal-indeed, failing a conversation and failing a fight are usually quite different things in real life. I don't want to make your cards baroque, but there is some amusement to the idea that after a fight the enemy goes home, but after a failed conversation a fight is still an option, according to the situation, for example.) So I can't help but wonder if there isn't some way, in your situation, to put those thoughts together-perhaps you could arrange that if you attack a problem in a way that is ‘in character’ there's an unconditional payoff in a *restricted* currency that then feeds back into that same character trait? So if you choose the ‘talk’ option and the talk option admits religious fervour (I'm making this up) as a secondary skill, then *even if you fail* your fervour increases, and that fervour is itself the resource you can use in luck mitigation-but (in this case) only if your character is religious. Meanwhile, the martial artist can ‘learn technique’ by being defeated in a martial arts check. Then for a truly heroic feel you maybe even let the bonuses be nonlinear in the unusual direction-by spending a point of fervour you get +1, but by spending two you get +3 or +4. And that could all still be compatible with ‘exerting’ yourself and spending ‘hearts’, if you want to make all paths locally open. You could even make that all less mathy by casting it in terms like different sized dice (oh, right, a Button Men subgame for skill checks, I just totally failed at non-mathy there!), ‘slide rules’ printed up the sides of cards, or CtoA style runes, made bankable. I'm just thinking out loud. I'm also amused by ‘criticals’ from RPGs-triggered by an extra die or an extreme value of the unmodified roll, you leave the ‘fast path’ and go looking in tables for the appropriate humorous low-probability outcome. But these are likely too thematic, too swingy, and insufficiently streamlined for a contemporary boardgame-they may work best when there's a GM to interpret them.
In my RPG system, players are required to pick a "stake" - a penalty of some kind - for the action, with then four possible types of results: - Rough failure: action failed and the stake is lost (penalty applied) - Rough success: action succeeded, but the stake is lost - Smooth failure: action failed, but stake retained (and gain xp) - Smooth success: action succeeded, stake retained. The test is a variation on the eldritch horror system, where no success "rolls" is a rough failure and two or more success "rolls" is a smooth success. One success "roll" is where it gets interesting - the players chooses between the two remaining options. That is, the player gets choose whether to lose what they staked, but succeed, or keep their stake, gain xp, but fail the action. It's rare to get a no successes - you generally have to be doing something pretty difficult, or that you're unsuited for. Most of the time, the crunch comes from picking whether the success or what you staked is more important, and there's no wasted "turns" unless a player specifically chooses that option.
Just thinking out loud (probably already done or mentioned below): 1. Arkham horror style dice rolling but if you fail you gain a token and later with enough tokens you can cash them in for automatic successes (where applicable). Removes all the negativity of a wasted turn. Can have something similar for enemies attacking you. Enough misses or soft hits and they come and do mass damage. 2. This may be how Arkham LCG works (played it once when it first came out, can’t recall) but every time you are short of a skill test you can add negative tokens into the pool of the skill test. That is to say maybe you have 4 dice and roll 2 success when you needed 3. You can choose to take the pass on the skill test but next time you roll 4 positive dice and 1 negative one (i.e. has minis successes). 2b. Not sure how your game works but Alternatively you can take a permanent damage that may only be healed by a special action to gain success on a test. Costly but maybe worth it to the player? 3. Gloomhaven and Journeys through middle earth have a “deck building” skill check where you can modify the deck as you play. You have a lot more control over what you are going to draw as you develop that deck. The latter has a card system where I believe the cards have better effects but less chances of successful checks and vice versa (weak effects more chance of success).
I enjoy the way Martin Wallace's The Witches handles it in the base rules - modified 4d6, where the cards that modify the roll are played after rolling two of the four dice, which neatly gets around the issues I find modified dice roll systems usually have for me of either having perfect information making the decision to modify the roll a calculation vs you have no information making the decision to modify the die roll into a crapshoot. Neither of which are necessarially bad but neither quite feels good to me as a player in most cases (I think this differs from spending a resources that I may want later like in Above and Below, mind)
I'm not sure if it is already a mechanic in your new game or not, but variable skill traits may be interesting! Kind of in the likeness of Betrayal at House on the Hill. Where different events and things change how skilled your character is in a certain area. So in an asymetric environment, players start good at some things, bad at others, but over the course of the game can grow in their ability and balance themselves by interactions they have over the course of the game. Maybe to counter the loss of a turn in performing a skill test, players can gain a certain amount of experience towards improving a skill. (In a previous video, I think you mentioned keeping the play time down to a medium length) So maybe on every two or three attempts on a skill check, you get better at that trait in the game? Something that a player couldn't just keep doing over and over until all their stats are maxed out, but to where if you attempt these skill checks, you have the potential to get better in that area regardless of pass or fail. Then if you fail, you still improve your character/faction over time. An interesting twist could be that you don't gain experience on a skill check pass, making it exclusive to the fail action.
Very interesting subject, this is a great way to ask people's opinion for your game! Personally I'm not a fan of skill tests that are really just "luck" tests. I prefer strategy, I'm a euro at heart :-) So if I was designing a game I would do everything I can to make sure it remains what a skill test is really what its name implies: a test of my skills, not my luck. Western legends brings an interesting aspect here: you collect cards that have dual purposes, and when you've amassed enough (you can push your luck there by going earlier with fewer cards) you go play poker, but it's a somewhat "calculated" poker, because you know what cards you're going with, and some cards affects the game in different ways. You could have a similar idea in an adventure game, where when you decide to go venture in a certain element that presents certain challenge (woods obscure visibility but allow you to hide, swamps slow you down but since certain enemies are slown down too having good long range aim is an advantage, etc...) and you can use your collected cards as "combat" helper, dexterity helper, speed helper, psychic helper, or even change aspects of the combat entirely. So depending on the cards collected you may venture in certain areas more than others, partner with players, push your luck, etc. You could introduce a real "skill" element (thinking dexterity games here) but it feels a bit gimic and excludes players who don't have manual skills, so not a fan. Good luck!
I love the Near and Far skill checks too. The ability to get a better reward either by rolling well or by spending hearts is another great feature. I'm not keen on the Eldritch Horror skill checks due to wasting a turn - not the only way that you can miss a turn in this game too - but they do lead to some fantastic against the odds victories. The runes in Call to Adventure sound good, improving your chances but making you more evil. There is a cost to succeeding. That sounds good to me. I was wondering whether skill checks could involve a system like Formula D where the dice you roll would depend on how adept you were at that skill.
I share your aversion to wasted turns - for me this is the turn where nothing happens. I was playing Folklore, which is a great game but has this issue. The defence values are such that a test to hit might need 60 on a percentile dice (effectively a D100). There were times where players would swing and miss, then the enemies would go and swing and miss, and I just thought "nothing happened in the last 5 minutes". Not ideal. One idea for your question at the end is not to have the test result being "good thing happens" vs "nothing happens" (the latter being the wasted turn). Instead, the good thing can always happen, but a failed test means something bad will also happen. For example, if the test is to scale a cliff, then a failure means you reach the top having taken some damage. I like randomness to be optional - for example, the example to scale the cliff could have a quick variant where I have to perform a skill test (and suffer consequences of failure such as taking damage) and a slow and safe variant where I automatically succeed but the latter takes an additional action (or requires more energy, or more time, or whatever). I think Tainted Grail has something like this. I'm looking at a combat mechanic where you can choose to roll some number of dice or just deal some damage specified by the character's card. The idea is that the players can either take the safe option, or embrace the chaos (potentially getting better results, potentially getting worse results).
John: I like your idea of always having a good thing happen (whether it's passing the skill test or simply providing something good, like in The 7th Continent), and when you fail, something bad also happens. I also like the idea of having an element of certainty or an element of chance (Robinson Crusoe has something like this that I completely forgot to mention in the video).
In Arkham Horror LCG there is no bag building aspect. The bag is filled at the start of the game to vary the difficulty setting and doesn't change during the game. I only have a few expansions so I don't know if this changes with later expansions.
I think the key for making a skill check, however you implement it, not cause a lost turn is to graduate the success. If you do very well, excellent things happen. If you do OK, something OK happens, and if you do something poorly, something bad happens. This may not end your turn, and a failed check might just lead the player down a different path, that might be as interesting as if they'd succeeded wildly. However, to keep the stakes high, you should make it harder to be successful on the poor success check. BTW -- One more interesting skill check to look into. The relatively new game Nemesis which was published thru KS by Awaken Realms. When you fight a monster, you flip over a card after you hit it. If the monster has more damage than the number on the card, it dies. If not, it's still alive. So you never really know how many HP the monster has. It might take 6 to kill it this round, and you only had 4. But you hit it again, and now it only needed 3 to die, so it dies. The twist is that on just a FEW of the cards in the deck, the monster escapes. And if it escapes into a tunnel you can't follow it thru, it comes off the board, and loses all it's damage. (Thematically, the next monster you encounter, might not be the exact same one of that type, so it has no damage.)
I know this is already a month old, but in case you are still reading this comments I would like to point towards and other RPG system - Call of Cthulthu (by Chaosium, they recently released a starter set which can even be bough as a PDF so I got into it and it is quite interesting and different to D&D adventures). You have skill scores similar to D&D, but they range from 0 to 99. On your character sheet you have all your skill scores, half of their values and 1/5th of them (it is quite some writing when creating a character, but as you'll see it leads to quick gameplay). When you get a check you have to roll percentile dice and succeed if you roll equal or lower to your score - what that means - higher score is better (so the scores are still intuitive), but no math is rquired and you know instantly what your odds are (I've seen in D&D someone stopping to think what their odds for a certain skill are), you have exactly "your ability score"% chance to succeed. The 1/2 and 1/5 values are used for hard and impossible skill tests (I don't remember the exact names of the difficulty levels, but you get the idea). So even for harder checks you just have to quickly check a single number, no math. But than on top of that you can spend luck points to reduce your roll. So you also have the system where you can spend a very important resource to get a success (luck itslef is also a skill and you will permanently reduce your chances of succeeding luck rolls by doing this) And than there is one last possiblity to "modify" the outcome. Whenever you fail a skill check you can push it - you have to describe to the DM how you will try to force the issue, BUT if you fail a pushed check there must be severe consequences. E.g. bad guys are trying to force their way into your room, you try to climb out of the window (lets say 4th floor) and you fail the check. Failing here doesn't come with any additional penalties except that you didn't manage the thing you tried (lets say the DM describes it as you trying to find something to hold onto while climbing, but you could't quickly find anything, so you never actually tried to do it). Now you say you'll tear some sheets appart and tie them to a bedpost and use them to try to quickly climb down - you will get another check, but this time it is assumed that you force the issue so if you fail this time your makeshift rope will tear and you will drop (the system is even more dependant on the DM then D&D) So in summary you can almost always get a re-try, but you know that failing it will get you into a bad situation (not necessarly killing you, but it can often be a possiblity)
I’d love to see something like Near and Far where the resource you spend to guarantee success is variable. If I have to build a fire, I can probably do it eventually but it will take a long time compared to someone experienced. If time is a critical component to the game, spending it poorly could end the game sooner than you’d like. In a fight though, the spent resource would need to be something like strength or life to show you escaped but are exhausted, or hurt. A third could be use of supplies. If I can build an item efficiently, I don’t need as many resources as if I screw it up the first time and need to use more resources to try again.
I am not sure whether or not you have checked the new upcoming games (scheduled to release this September), called Tidal Blades. When I see the gameplay, I get the sense of "balanced" skill test, just as near and far you have mentioned in the video. you might want to check that out. Nevertheless, can't wait to see your new game!!
I really like the skill checks from Mansions of Madness with the difference values for each skill and have a die roll to determine success. I agree that the worst thing is having wasted turns on those skills checks. I would prefer to use clues has auto successes and not use them only when you have a clue symbol on the die roll. Another one that looks interesting (haven't tried it yet) is the skill checks on Lord of the Rings Journeys in Middle Earth. This one look even better because of the Scout that you do at the beginning of the heroes turn, so you can put the cards you are interested in on top of the deck and the others at the bottom, refining the success rate. Again, you have the same issue as in MoM since you don't have anything to give you Auto successes but with great consequences. Maybe have the same thing as in LOTR Journeys in Middle Earth but you can discard cards from the deck into the discard pile for each auto success, and each time you have to reshuffle your deck in those situation you need to pay something (life for example since you are exceeding yourself). Or maybe you have limited times you can use this auto success per game and after that you need to take one damage (for physical checks) or sanity (for intelligence/lore checks). Just my 2 cents.
Hey thank you for your analysis you talk about a lot nuances I did not see about the mechanis itself…. I especially liked when talked about consequence (achieving or not the skill test) in some games of the games you were describing and I feel this is a big part of the questioning, after the skill test. All of the other mechanics : mitigation, information (push)/luck, using of other resources … all of the decision is based on the consequences. Of course wasting a turn is a consequence, but some games will throw at you some real big consequences of you don't succeed. I felt like the cool part about «winning» the skill test in Arakam Horror the card game or the Power card in Aeon’s End wasn't that I won something is that I didn't get the consequences. Although no example comes right, sometimes it's the opposite, the bad consequences are not that big if I'm not able to do it, but I really want to get the thing. I feel that it is the result of the skill test that makes the decision process interesting. Sometimes you don't even know what will or you know it in some amount, like in Robinson you know that if you don't achieve a test you'll be in trouble but you don't know how much…. Also Robinson adds a narrative to the skill test which is another resolve bit itself. I don't know if my comment adds anything interesting to the discussion, but I feel that we need to analyse all this mitigation mechanic in front of the consequences that the player will have. I cannot make any statement, however, about what are the bests consequences in terms of fun in gameplay or information that it's given to the player or correlation between player mitigation abilty and consequence. But I feel like the outcome is part of the skill test, and is a big part of the enjoyement. Sorry if some mistake sounds weird English isn't my first language and sometimes it shows.
I like the example of variable consequences if you fail. You still fail, but something interesting happens (and maybe it's not even a bad thing)--I like that.
Forgive me if this has been mentioned already. How about if there are different types of skill checks, let there be different types of rewards from those checks. The easier tests give you lower rewards whereas the harder skill checks give you greater rewards. Then you can add even more modifiers to those checks. For example, the skill check you choose is to talk to the creature. If you come in the low range it gets mad and attacks anyway causing you to fight it. Getting a mid range skill check would just frustrate the creature and you pass but no other rewards. And for getting the high end of the skill check would be they give you a valuable piece of information.
That's kind of the core concept in my game, except you don't have multiple options within each check. Like, you can talk to the creature or fight the creature, and talking might be easier than fighting, but there aren't different levels of difficulty when talking to the creature.
Jamey Stegmaier I personally prefer rolling dice like Arkham Horror rather than flipping cards such as Gloomhaven. So that being said, if my character has a set skill level, I would suggest equipment (swords, bows, spells and other buyable or learnable attributes) to help mitigate those rolls and with that other rare commodity (like the hearts from Near and Far) even further help with that skill check.
I played ‘clank in space’ and I think when the bad guy (lord .....??) comes into play I guess there is a skills test when the cubes are removed from the bag and what’s in the bag for your colour is determined by other decisions and cards played from your deck. If that makes sense.
That makes sense! I actually just played Clank yesterday (for the 30th or so time--I love the game), and I thought about mentioning it, but I didn't quite consider it a skill test in the traditional sense of the word, as you're not comparing your character's skill to any threshold set by the game.
Jamey Stegmaier yeah thought I might be misinterpreting what a skills test was. Quite tense when you know you have a few cubes in the bag of your colour 😬 looking forward to the new game. Waiting for wingspan to be available again as missed the boat on that.
Do you have any additional insights or best practices for skill tests? (Maybe) For some inspiration here is my skill test mechanism (the tldr version): - # of skill rank = # of automatic successes - You roll to determine additional successes - Each success chips away at the task's "health." Some tasks you can only get one attempt at. Some you get multiple. - Each character has called "Drive" that can be used to add to it but I don't know the exact rules for how it is gained, how it's used, and the costs just yet. (Similar vibe to Hearts in "Near and Far")
Thanks for sharing! So, say it's a skill test of 6, and my character has 3 of that skill. I roll a certain quantity of dice (what determines that quantity?), and the target of the test "remembers" the number of successes. I can also spend drive to gain additional successes. Overall I think you're on the right track (though I'd recommend testing it to see if it's a little too much to manage, particularly the idea of the target remembering the successes). It's also missing one ingredient I mentioned in this video: Some control over input (how much do you want to risk). You could potentially adjust that to a push-your-luck mechanism.
@@jameystegmaier Completely forgot to mention the how you determine your success. Currently, you roll a d20 and based on the result it determines the number of additional success. 1-4 = +0, 5-9 = +1, 10-14 = +2, 15-19 = +3, and a 20 = critical success (currently looking at what exactly that means). I am looking at other alternatives using d6s as well (like using 3d6 and on a 4+ you get +1 success; if you get 2 6's or triples you get a critical success). Also should have mentioned, that it will be a tabletop rpg so will be more similar to D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, etc. In terms of the "health" of the task, the GM manages that but I am pretty sure you are right that it may be too much for them to keep track of. When it comes to control over the input, I think the best way is you decide how much "Drive" you spend. I have a lot of thoughts on the cost, drawbacks, and limitations of that. Appreciate you taking the time to reply! (sidenote: been using and loving Milanote for keeping track of all of my notes and thoughts for my game)
@@fatesreforged Thanks for clarifying. I'm personally not a big fan of d20s--there's so much variance in them compared to d6s or even the fun-to-roll d12s. Also, I have a much more recent video on this topic: ruclips.net/video/qVePlqWZkmM/видео.html
Very interesting video. I never thought designing a game was easy, but you highlight how much there is to think about. For your new game you're currently designing, I'm wondering in terms of encountering the same monster/creature again and whether their skill test should be the same: could there be an element of the creature "remembering" something about you from the first encounter? And/or you remembering something about them? So the fight could play out differently the second time somehow? I guess I think I would find it really interesting and enjoyable if the second (or third or fourth!) time you encounter an NPC, that they remember something about you and it's not the same encounter every time. I've played Legacy of Dragonholt and I really liked that (for the most part) what you had done before had an effect on your next encounter with that NPC. I don't want to give away any specific Legacy of Dragonholt spoilers, but I'm sure you will know what I mean. Of course I don't know how this idea fits with how your game is going to play.
Helen: Thanks for your note. That aspect of "remembering" is something that Time Stories and The Reckoners do well. I'm not sure it quite works in my game, but it's a good idea, and I'll consider it. I also like the way Legacy of Dragonholt does it.
In your game example your different scenarios sound like they should used different types of skill checks. So I would like the version where the different characters would have different skills at different levels. This could be a set level that you increase, maybe with experience, throughout the game or a base which would include a dice roll or card drafting to get the total. Then to keep with your want for non waisted turn you could have a mechanism for spending something in order to increase you skill by x or retolling/drawing. Another mechanic for increasing and/or adding skills is to adding to your character. This could be through items, knowledge/experience, allys. As far as wanting the player to make the best option not just the easiest could be done in a few ways. 1. Show the rewards so you can see that talking gives the best reward but my barbarian might have a hard time accomplishing it. 2. Let characters have a main ability/skill and if they pass that type of skill check the reward I'd increased.
I looked at the comments and I didn't see it. Quick clarification on House of Danger. You have two things that change in a skill challenge. If you fail a roll, the danger meter goes up, you can try again, and the danger meter might go up again, and eventually you'll hit the top, needing a 6, if you fail, it resets to the original point, at that point in time, you lose some psychic ability. And then you can repeat the process again, so if you're bad at rolling dice, you can eventually take yourself down to little to no psychic ability.
I'd be interested in an a Morality or Ethics system in a game where things are built over time. So for example, if I build a group of negotiators they could have issues fighting the monsters they have been negotiating with or if I had a nation of spirit worshipers they may have problems hunting the nearby bear cave.
How you looked at the indie RPG Apocalypse World by Vincent and Meguey Baker? You may also want to read the classic indie RPG Sorcerer by Ron Edwards. I think that you'd find it enlightening.
Personally, I don't like having the ability to guarantee a success for every check. I haven't played Near & Far but the skill checks as you describe them don't sound interesting to me. It seems like that only choice to be made is whether you should pay for a win or not. It might work if the resource for those "auto successes" are very limited but it seems like the tension wouldn't be there. To take the classic D&D example, whatever the odds are, there is always the chance of a automatic success or automatic fail (natural 20 or natural 1). In Arkham Horror LCG there are the "automatic success" and "automatic fail" tokens in the draw bag so that there is always a chance to succeed or fail. In Gloomhaven there is the "crit" and "miss" cards. I think that constant possibility of failure and chance of success (however small) is what creates that excitement for skill checks. And as others have pointed out, a failed skill check doesn't have to mean "nothing happens". Instead it could mean something bad or unfavorable happens. Perhaps failing the lockpicking check causes the guard to be alerted. Or maybe a failed conversation check means the character will now require payment before speaking with you. Or maybe a failed attack is a glancing blow that deals half damage. There are a lot of options beside pass/fail.
It's good to avoid null turns but that is the opposite of high stakes! (It is the side I prefer). I also prefer solid after the fact consumables (like N&F hearts) not random ones like re-rolls you buy in advance (5e D&D Inspiration) or even after (AH 2e). A Feast for Odin has something like Near & Far - you see what you need to spend after you roll the dice. It also has compensation for failed turns - some other resources & maybe some meeples back. Arkham Horror LCG has multiple actions in each turn so it is rare that a whole turn is wasted even if you fluff some dice rolls (token draws) though misery & frustration are thematic there. Eldritch Horror for example can certainly feed you wasted turns, these often cascade into more wasted turns as your actions the following turn are constrained, and risk failing some more. When I played 4e D&D, the most boardgamey edition with long infrequent feeling turns, I hated classes that staked everything on one roll each turn. I like to have something to mitigate this either classes that made multiple attacks so they were likely to get SOMETHING done or classes with built in low variance actions so they always achieved that at a minimum. Examples would be clerical healing or automatic status effects that were applied eg set something on fire but roll for extra damage. It is less of an issue in other editions where you often fly through turns but you can have while evenings where you feel you personally might as well not have been there. Something like that where you always achieve a minimum result can help minimise the frustration of wasted turns.
You should check the "mastery" system in HeroQuest (the RPG) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeroQuest_(role-playing_game)#Game_mechanics It fits your point that a master archer will only fail in very difficult circumstances. Also, it's a non-binary system that cares about the quality of a success (or a failure), not just if the check was passed or not.
Hi ! Justs a Thought, I am developing a card game (I ve never pushished a game, i do this as hobbie but i can only dream to do it someday) I saw your video and thought maybe for your game. You can have like a stanima stat, that your characters start the adventure with, and thats what they can spend. If they go to "0" they start to have some negative consequences, I just thought of this watching your video. In my card game if my characters go to "0" they are gonna start to take damaged, and they can have maybe some cards that can play with that fatigue in a positive side or the enemy might start capturing (KO) the characters or eliminate them. Good luck with your games Jamey, i loved charterstone, and I wish you the very best.
I don't know if I understood the example of your game well, but you say a player has to discard a certain number of cards if he wants to pass a test. So a threshold for defeating a monster(fight) may be 3. In order to achieve that, a player may discard 3 cards with swords(for example) shown on them. This way it's certain that he'll pass. However, my idea is: a player may also choose to discard LESS than required(for example only 2 cards with appropriate symbol) and then try to draw a random card from the deck. If he draws a proper symbol, then hooray! He made a success spending only two cards. But if there's no symbol that he needed, then a test is failed or at least only half-successful(or you could think about "range of success/failure", the more symbols you lack then it's worse but it's never a wasted turn unless you don't spend anything). This way, a player has a meaningful choice: do I want to spend more, but be certain about the outcome, or do I want to push my luck and hope that I draw the thing I want? Sorry if anybody has already come with such an idea but I haven't been able to read thoughout all 76 comments :) Thank you for this video, it made me think about some things!
Thanks, Damian! I really like that idea. It reminds me a little bit of the system in Robinson Crusoe where you can use 2 workers to definitely pass a test or 1 worker with a risk involved.
I’m a fan of Tikal and Mexica and if you have played any of the mask trilogy they use an action point allowance system. 6 points each turn. This got me thinking about how this could be implemented in other ways. I have little knowledge of your game but My thinking is this. Example Character (A) an Archer has 10 action points to use of his turn. Due to him been talented with a Bow the use of the bow cost his 1 point from his allowance while taking a skill test that involved the Bow/ archery skill. Where as the same character in a close hand to hand combat the use of a blade may use up 4 action points. No action is out of reach from any hero but their skills set the number of action they are able to do each turn. Either do may actions that the Character excels at or fewer action that he is only ok at. This places the decision back on the players on what type of turn they will have. These talent could be modified by card effects and or die roll similar to the Near and far method. (I’m and fan of this method of near and far.) either adding more action points to a character or reducing the cost of an action to make a character better at it.
Rather than playing cards from their hand with known values, perhaps incorporate having the players revealing cards from the deck. Blackjack style; pushing their luck, and hoping not to bust.
Good lord, no, don't fight the shop assistants. Not since they started understanding about fireball bank shots. Um. You probably haven't even played NetHack, though.
I love how in Horrified the monsters you fight against perform the skill check and when you fight back you simply spend any of the items you have picked up, the same items you use to complete the puzzles to defeat the monsters.
Second comment, but it feels separate, as someone who playing and runs a lot of RPG's, the idea of not just failing and then having nothing come form it, but instead you still get something, it feels like what is known as in RPG's as "failing forward". Where it's level of success, much like Near and Far, you can succeed by a bit or by a lot. But the idea is that you will succeed, but depending on how well you succeed, things might happen. So when something bad happens on a roll, for picking a lock, for example, you always unlock it because we need to move forward into that room, because that's where the story goes, but a low roll means that the goblin on the other side of the door won't be surprised, so you lose some benefit. Or maybe you roll so poorly that you don't pick the lock, but it alerts the goblin who opens the door and now they get to surprise you, so yes, there is failure, but you can have three different levels, and the story always moves forward.
This video is exactly what I needed. I'm working on a game that's somewhere between Call to Adventure and Near and Far. The biggest challenge I come across is ending up with waaay too many icons and symbology. Between identifying challenge types, terrain types, card types, etc. I end up with a ton of icons that I think makes a big barrier to entry. Text could resolve this, but unfortunately it's not as eye-catching for quick reference, and then card orientation becomes a big battle as well (I'm fine reading cards upside down, but I know some people are very against it).
The immediate thought is to reduce the symbols, but then the 'story' of the game becomes more narrow, and I really want to capture the feel of an evocative world. I haven't played Call to Adventure, but it seems like they found a nice line between creating story and being user-friendly.
Best of luck on your efforts, Jamie. Really appreciate these videos.
I'm glad it came at a good time for you, Wiliam! I think you're wise to keep an eye on the overhead resulting from the number of icons. My video on Thursday talked more in depth about the skill tests in Call to Adventure (and I'm sure there are other videos that are better at explaining it).
How do I find out more about your game William? Sounds intriguing if it’s really a cross between those two!
@@PurpleMoose23 Haha I'm flattered, but it's very much in the "scribbled on bits of paper" state. Keep an eye out for it on store shelves in 2021 (or as soon as a publisher realizes how brilliant it is, hehe).
Alway appreciate your nuance in pros and cons of design decisions. A couple things came to mind for me.
You mentioned already in a reply to another comment that you forgot Robinson Crusoe's pay with critical resources for certainty. That and your archer example makes me think of something akin to DnD's concentration requirement for some effects. Just like in real life, the full benefit of a skill requires giving up focus/time/ability in some other challenge -- sometimes we spend all our energy to perfect something even if we are highly skilled in the area and then other times we half-ass things we are good at and hope it's good enough.
Poker's balance between pushing luck in hoping certain cards are drawn, skill and knowledge of probabilities, and bluffing skill does a good job of presenting options for players to balance between gaining more or less by affecting the size of the pot. Sometimes the sure thing is to push everyone out to win a smaller pot and sometimes deciding to take risks is desired.
To get another data point, card skill tests in Lord of the Rings: Journeys In Middle earth. Not the only game that does this but pull X number of cards off of deck where X= character’s value in that skill. Cards have success icons on a percentage of cards in the deck. In this specific game there are also fate icons that allow you to spend inspiration which is a universal currency to get another success. it’s the same system as Manson’s of madness without dice.
Neat thing is that the cards are multi-use with usually the best skills having the success symbol on it. Makes for a hard choice of taking that card out of the deck and changing your odds for its special ability. Also this system lets you scout x number of cards which means draw that many cards from your custom deck and put them back in any order and even bottom deck them to better your odds.
Love these vids. Thanks and can’t wait to see where this lands with you and your game! I’m glad you are not always looking for what works, but also what’s most fun as well!
That's a really cool concept of how the best cards for the players to keep are also the best cards to have in the deck!
I don't know if any game has this (there probably is), but a less binary system seems like an interesting ideia, like:
Instead of either failing or accomplishing the task, the system could be graded. You would be able to: fail, fail partially, succeed or succeed masterfully (just an example). So the player has to make the skill test but only knows the skill required (Strengh for instance) and doesn't know the actual number of successes needed for it. To spice things up you could make it so that the player still can't know what grade he got, so he doesn't know if he failed or not, only the outcome of his actions (this could be accomplished by someone else reading the skill test for the player).
The good thing about this system is that you'll probably succeed (so you won't waste your turn) but there might be some unforseen consequences and you might not even know that you failed.
Love your videos and games. Thanks for these!
In terms of skill check systems, one system you might think about is the Fate rpg system. Characters have "aspects" (short descriptions of traits, background, relationships, et cetera that could have positive or negative effects in different situations: "orphaned street urchin" or "obsessively ethical"). They also have skills (how good are you at, for example, riding a horse, which would be an issue in a horse race or fighting on a horse). Skills are tuned to the setting for the game (sci-fi? hacking becomes a skill, etc.). On a skill check, a threshold number for success is set, the skill is picked and gives a numerical bonus, and the player rolls four dice ("fudge dice") with pluses, minuses, and blanks. The dice modify the skill level and you see if you succeed (in a "contested" check, like a fight, the two sides roll against one another to see who succeeds). You succeed if your total is higher than the threshold.
But there are a couple wrinkles. First, players have "fate points" they can spend on checks to invoke an aspect which might have a bearing on the roll (adding 2 to the roll if their aspect makes them "fated" to do better at that sort of thing). Players can get more fate points during the session by agreeing to have negative things happen to their character because of their aspects (these negatives are supposed to open up interesting situations tied to who their character is that they then need to deal with as they pursue their goals). Second, There are four outcome types, which are applied differently depending on the situation. "Fail" can lead to getting something other than what you want or succeeding at great cost (using whatever resource seems applicable). The idea, as I understand it, is to have failures lead to new situations, not "nothing happens." In a board game, this could be an opportunity for player choice between something they didn't want and succeeding at great cost. "Tie" means getting a lesser version of what you wanted or what you want at minor cost (another possible choice). "Succeed" means you get what you want at no cost. And "Succeed with Style" leads to you getting what you want along with some other benefit (a third possible choice between benefits).
Anyway, a bit long, but if you take the time, I hope it helps you in your creative process.
Matt: This is awesome! I appreciate you sharing the FATE system in detail. It seems to combine a few different ideas expressed in the video and the comments, which is great.
While this is much more applicable to RPGs, but I really enjoy the skill tests in Fantasy Flight's Star Wars games. The idea is that you have a dice pool with specialized dice that have differing amounts of successes and a second pool based on the difficulty with a particular amount of fails. You roll them together and you can easily cancel them out to see if you have more successes than fails. This is a pretty standard black and white skill test, but what makes it particularly fun is that there is a second set of symbols on the dice which are "advantages" and "disadvantages". Basically, you can succeed in a skill test, but if you have aggregate more disadvantage symbols, then the gamemaster assigns some kind of complication to your character after you succeed like, "You successfully shot the stormtrooper, but your gun has jammed and you cannot shoot again until you make a successful repair check". Similarly, you can fail a skill test, but gain an advantage which players are encouraged to describe themselves for gamemaster approval, like "Okay, my run check failed, but I got an advantage, so let's say I fell down behind a table while running and have a bonus to hiding as a result." It's a clever system in that it encourages players to join in creative storytelling.
That doesn't work as well for the more rigid rules needed for board games, but while I was tinkering with a homebrew RPG system in the past, I had a system where you rolled your skill test with a dice pool and, yes you needed to pass a certain threshhold to succeed in a standard pass/fail. However, if you have a proficiency in that skill, upon failure, you're allowed to "lock" one (or more if you're further proficient) of your rolled dice and use if for the next roll in the same skill check. The idea behind it is that you're used to these kinds of situations so as you learn the context of this particular skill check and so you have an advantage on future rolls. In that sense, your turn isn't wholly wasted. Your attempt learned you something about the attempt and your (hopefully high number) locked dice represents what you learned which you can use to improve future attempts.
Another way of doing this that I eventually gave up due to heavy bookkeeping, is that players roll skill checks and even if they fail, they retain their whole value of their skill roll which they can apply to the same exact skill check the next time around. The idea behind it being the same, but again, then players are writing down various numbers to track all their past attempts and I thought it was too confusing.
Also, a way to incorporate the possibility of rare failure or success is to assign a special die (or multiple) that gives you a critical hit and fail on one of the faces each, the former is always a success regardless of the rest of your roll and the latter is always a failure. You could also assign other special features to the use of this special die that can affect the game or situation in other ways as well. I used a system like this in the homebrew, to represent the unpredictability of magic, but it could be used in other contexts.
One of the most interesting skill tests are the tests in the survival/horror RPG Dread. Every time the players have to check a skill they have to take a piece out of a jenga tower. The later into the adventure, the harder it gets to pass the test. It gives the GM a great way to give the story an interesting arc and tension.
That's really cool!
Friday by Friedmann Friese is a solitaire game with some element of that Near and Far skill check, but it's much more interesting and it's a more central part of the game. It's a solo deck-builder where each turn you're presented with two different challenges and must choose which one to confront. The more difficult the challenge, the better the reward. The reward is to add the card to your deck, where it becomes something you can use against future challenges. If you don't succeed against the challenge, you can pay hearts to draw another card to add to your skill. Or, you can choose to deliberately fail the challenge, in which case you can "learn from your mistakes" and purge some of the weaker cards from your deck, becoming stronger in the future. It sounds like a variation of this might be helpful for your upcoming game since you're already planning on using cards for the skill check.
Thanks for sharing, David! I'll have to think about if something like this will translate into my game.
Something I REALLY like in skill tests is a scale of success, as opposed to a black and white pass/fail. That way, the stakes can be high, in that you KNOW aligning the the correct stats with the appropriate test will result in better rewards. But then at the other end, not hitting a threshold doesn't result in "FAIL: Nothing happens. Try again later" and instead leads to a different result that might not be considered as good. Creature escapes and moves elsewhere (which may or may not be good enough for what you're trying to accomplish). Maybe you're trying to gain an ally and by failing a diplomacy check, you get into a fight with them that ultimately allows you to get their stuff, instead of their help. So... you failed a test, but it shaped the experience and allowed you to adapt and either gain something in the end, or at least progress a sense of narrative so it doesn't feel like you just wasted a turn.
My favorite choice of options (resembling skill tests) game ever is Tales of the Arabian Nights, which is like a super crazy version of Above and Below/Near and Far (or the book stuff of those games). In that game, there's an entire matrix of choices for interacting with certain situations, which is AWESOME. However, the end result of anything you do is pretty much random and not based on any stats or skills. I always think it would be cool to have a similar matrix where your character skills fit into it at different levels. Like, a fighter would have the highest chances of scoring well in a fight check, and the lowest chances of success in a diplomacy check, but there are middle things that allow players to kind of pick a balance between what the odds are and how they actually want to approach a situation/what they think will yield the best results given the context of the skill test in the narrative of the game.
Not... exactly strictly skill test stuff there, but that's what I was thinking of the entire time I was watching the video.
I very much like the idea of a sliding scale!
As a simple, but somewhat interesting skill check is in Ticket to Ride for the Tunnels. The skill test could have a small range you that may require you to give up health or resources to pass if the test his higher by a random chance.
Another option, the skill check system in XCOM: The Board Game. Similar to Time Stories where you're trying to accumulate enough successes but with an added "Push your luck" element, as you can roll as many times as you want each turn, but every time you do it the difficulty increases, and if you fail you lose all your progress for that turn.
Arzaquel Anzures I also wanted to mention XCOM. There are a few interesting aspects.
1. You can both succeed and “fail” simultaneously. You do need a certain number of successes to pass the test, but the addition of the enemy die means that you can lose resources even if you pass the test.
2. The press your luck element is interesting, because you have the ability to accumulate successes over multiple rolls. But as you pointed out, each roll comes with a higher chance of losing your resources.
3. For the squad leader, he can adjust the chance of success by increasing the of soldiers committed to the test, by matching specialties between a soldier and the enemy, and/or by using an upgraded unit. And you can only upgrade the unit by not using it in combat during a round.
Brilliant video. Yeah its one aspect of games that is very intriguing and obviously in my own designs I've had to come up with different ways to do it.
And i wonder sometimes with some of the designs is it a skill test I'm designing/implementing or a resolution economy.
I sure do appreciate your videos. Great thought provoking ideas and it helped me refine the skill checks in our game Dawnshade. I’m excited to see what you came up with it. 👍
I'm very happy to hear that, Jeff! I look forward to seeing what you did with skill checks in Dawnshade.
@@jameystegmaier Thanks! We were hoping to launch Dawnshade May 19th but it's hard to say now with this global pandemic. (although Frosthaven sure isn't hurting haha) I didn't realize at first that this video was from a year ago. Have you officially announced the mystery game you were talking about?
@@jettryker I've continued to hint at it from time to time, but it's a massive game--it won't be ready until next year at the earliest. :)
I also like how Mansions if Madness (2nd Ed) has some skill checks where you don’t know the required number of successes. The app will track cumulative progress and it might take multiple player turns to pass the test. This gives some uncertainty as to whether to spend the clue tokens to convert clue symbols to successes. Wouldn’t work in every genre but but for a mystery type game it works.
How you describe the Near and Far system, with the ability to spend a resource (ex: hearts) to help overcome a failed skill check is similar to Arkham Horror (the precursor to Eldritch Horror). In Arkham Horror, you roll skill checks as you described for Eldritch Horror. Additionally, you can spend clue tokens - a precious resource - to add dice to your rolls. You can do so one at a time to try to pass a check that you are currently failing.
Very insightful as always, Jamey! Thanks! :)
The skill test you described reminded me a bit of the one in Great Western Trail when you reach Kansas City and need certain different cows in order to make a successful delivery. But I think you could propose something similar to what Alexander Pfister did along the way to Kansas City, as he provides opportunities for players to spend their cards throughout the game in order to achieve certain benefits (which is kinda like a mini skill test), but knowing that might lead them to be less prepared for when the important skill test comes.
What I mean is, if a player actually had over 6 skill as you said in your example, for example 2 cards with 2 skill and one with 3 skill, he could still choose the "talk" or "fight" options because he was afraid of discarding everything and get a lot of 1s, for example. And he rather saves the 3 skill card for a more important skill test.
Hope this helps in some way! :)
That's really interesting! I hadn't thought about that as a skill test, but I like it!
I haven’t played it, but you might want to look at “Burning Wheel.” What I heard was that failing a skill check is the only way to improve your skill level. So a player might hope to fail at a skill check so they can get better at that skill.
Nice, I like that idea! It's a less abstract way of showing that your character has gained experience from the attempt, which improves their ability to do it again for all future attempts.
I like the simplicity of the 'Skill Checks' in Starfarers of Catan or Oracle of Delphi as they do not take over the game. In Oracle, you have 3 tasks which are defeating a monster. All monsters strength start as a 9 - your shields. You then roll a D10 - 0 get injury, meet the number or exceed, defeat the monster and gain an item. If you don't succeed, spend a a favor and roll again with the Monster's strength reduced as 1, etc. It is just quick and does not lead to wasting turns very much and when you do it is because you pushed your luck. So the Shields function as a skill check that you can pick up at various points in the game.
Starfarers of Catan has a choose your own adventure novel aspect and a ship where you upgrade. The choices are often based on what parts of your ships and what kind of upgrades that you have that you may add to the randomizer to determine the result. Also there are exploration pogs that you can look at while you fly your ships by that may have a terraform rating or a combat rating (space pirate worlds, damn those pirates). If you have the correct number of upgrades you can place a colony there. The upgrades function as skill checks. They really are just called something different. I like both of these examples as they are quick and easy and don't bog the games down terribly. They add tension without your game being over if you miss just one skill check.
So T7C of course has after the fact mitigation, too (and other things that I probably shouldn't mention) *if* you have the right cards in hand or the right passive abilities, and some of the learnable skill of the game-as well as of levelling your character up in various ways-is in getting to the point that the resources that ‘happen’ to be available to you are the result of strategy rather than luck. I'm still busy being amazed at how this all manages to be quite ‘meta’ but simultaneously thematic.
I also like the fact that T7C and Call to Adventure both actually slightly *reward* failure, to the point that in there are times when you might deliberately make a lame attempt at something where failure does not look too painful, because it's the consolation prize that you want. (There are also times in T7C where the direct consequences of failure are worth considering. Not all failure modes need be equal-indeed, failing a conversation and failing a fight are usually quite different things in real life. I don't want to make your cards baroque, but there is some amusement to the idea that after a fight the enemy goes home, but after a failed conversation a fight is still an option, according to the situation, for example.)
So I can't help but wonder if there isn't some way, in your situation, to put those thoughts together-perhaps you could arrange that if you attack a problem in a way that is ‘in character’ there's an unconditional payoff in a *restricted* currency that then feeds back into that same character trait? So if you choose the ‘talk’ option and the talk option admits religious fervour (I'm making this up) as a secondary skill, then *even if you fail* your fervour increases, and that fervour is itself the resource you can use in luck mitigation-but (in this case) only if your character is religious. Meanwhile, the martial artist can ‘learn technique’ by being defeated in a martial arts check. Then for a truly heroic feel you maybe even let the bonuses be nonlinear in the unusual direction-by spending a point of fervour you get +1, but by spending two you get +3 or +4. And that could all still be compatible with ‘exerting’ yourself and spending ‘hearts’, if you want to make all paths locally open.
You could even make that all less mathy by casting it in terms like different sized dice (oh, right, a Button Men subgame for skill checks, I just totally failed at non-mathy there!), ‘slide rules’ printed up the sides of cards, or CtoA style runes, made bankable. I'm just thinking out loud.
I'm also amused by ‘criticals’ from RPGs-triggered by an extra die or an extreme value of the unmodified roll, you leave the ‘fast path’ and go looking in tables for the appropriate humorous low-probability outcome. But these are likely too thematic, too swingy, and insufficiently streamlined for a contemporary boardgame-they may work best when there's a GM to interpret them.
In my RPG system, players are required to pick a "stake" - a penalty of some kind - for the action, with then four possible types of results:
- Rough failure: action failed and the stake is lost (penalty applied)
- Rough success: action succeeded, but the stake is lost
- Smooth failure: action failed, but stake retained (and gain xp)
- Smooth success: action succeeded, stake retained.
The test is a variation on the eldritch horror system, where no success "rolls" is a rough failure and two or more success "rolls" is a smooth success. One success "roll" is where it gets interesting - the players chooses between the two remaining options. That is, the player gets choose whether to lose what they staked, but succeed, or keep their stake, gain xp, but fail the action.
It's rare to get a no successes - you generally have to be doing something pretty difficult, or that you're unsuited for. Most of the time, the crunch comes from picking whether the success or what you staked is more important, and there's no wasted "turns" unless a player specifically chooses that option.
Just thinking out loud (probably already done or mentioned below):
1. Arkham horror style dice rolling but if you fail you gain a token and later with enough tokens you can cash them in for automatic successes (where applicable). Removes all the negativity of a wasted turn. Can have something similar for enemies attacking you. Enough misses or soft hits and they come and do mass damage.
2. This may be how Arkham LCG works (played it once when it first came out, can’t recall) but every time you are short of a skill test you can add negative tokens into the pool of the skill test. That is to say maybe you have 4 dice and roll 2 success when you needed 3. You can choose to take the pass on the skill test but next time you roll 4 positive dice and 1 negative one (i.e. has minis successes).
2b. Not sure how your game works but Alternatively you can take a permanent damage that may only be healed by a special action to gain success on a test. Costly but maybe worth it to the player?
3. Gloomhaven and Journeys through middle earth have a “deck building” skill check where you can modify the deck as you play. You have a lot more control over what you are going to draw as you develop that deck. The latter has a card system where I believe the cards have better effects but less chances of successful checks and vice versa (weak effects more chance of success).
Thanks for these examples, Matthew! I really like how these examples give players more power over the AI's power level.
I enjoy the way Martin Wallace's The Witches handles it in the base rules - modified 4d6, where the cards that modify the roll are played after rolling two of the four dice, which neatly gets around the issues I find modified dice roll systems usually have for me of either having perfect information making the decision to modify the roll a calculation vs you have no information making the decision to modify the die roll into a crapshoot. Neither of which are necessarially bad but neither quite feels good to me as a player in most cases (I think this differs from spending a resources that I may want later like in Above and Below, mind)
The idea of playing dice in the middle of the die roll is really cool! thanks for sharing.
I'm not sure if it is already a mechanic in your new game or not, but variable skill traits may be interesting!
Kind of in the likeness of Betrayal at House on the Hill. Where different events and things change how skilled your character is in a certain area. So in an asymetric environment, players start good at some things, bad at others, but over the course of the game can grow in their ability and balance themselves by interactions they have over the course of the game.
Maybe to counter the loss of a turn in performing a skill test, players can gain a certain amount of experience towards improving a skill. (In a previous video, I think you mentioned keeping the play time down to a medium length) So maybe on every two or three attempts on a skill check, you get better at that trait in the game? Something that a player couldn't just keep doing over and over until all their stats are maxed out, but to where if you attempt these skill checks, you have the potential to get better in that area regardless of pass or fail. Then if you fail, you still improve your character/faction over time. An interesting twist could be that you don't gain experience on a skill check pass, making it exclusive to the fail action.
I like that a lot!
Very interesting subject, this is a great way to ask people's opinion for your game! Personally I'm not a fan of skill tests that are really just "luck" tests. I prefer strategy, I'm a euro at heart :-) So if I was designing a game I would do everything I can to make sure it remains what a skill test is really what its name implies: a test of my skills, not my luck. Western legends brings an interesting aspect here: you collect cards that have dual purposes, and when you've amassed enough (you can push your luck there by going earlier with fewer cards) you go play poker, but it's a somewhat "calculated" poker, because you know what cards you're going with, and some cards affects the game in different ways. You could have a similar idea in an adventure game, where when you decide to go venture in a certain element that presents certain challenge (woods obscure visibility but allow you to hide, swamps slow you down but since certain enemies are slown down too having good long range aim is an advantage, etc...) and you can use your collected cards as "combat" helper, dexterity helper, speed helper, psychic helper, or even change aspects of the combat entirely. So depending on the cards collected you may venture in certain areas more than others, partner with players, push your luck, etc. You could introduce a real "skill" element (thinking dexterity games here) but it feels a bit gimic and excludes players who don't have manual skills, so not a fan. Good luck!
I love the Near and Far skill checks too. The ability to get a better reward either by rolling well or by spending hearts is another great feature. I'm not keen on the Eldritch Horror skill checks due to wasting a turn - not the only way that you can miss a turn in this game too - but they do lead to some fantastic against the odds victories. The runes in Call to Adventure sound good, improving your chances but making you more evil. There is a cost to succeeding. That sounds good to me. I was wondering whether skill checks could involve a system like Formula D where the dice you roll would depend on how adept you were at that skill.
I like that, David! I think Xia does something like that with dice upgrades.
I share your aversion to wasted turns - for me this is the turn where nothing happens. I was playing Folklore, which is a great game but has this issue. The defence values are such that a test to hit might need 60 on a percentile dice (effectively a D100). There were times where players would swing and miss, then the enemies would go and swing and miss, and I just thought "nothing happened in the last 5 minutes". Not ideal.
One idea for your question at the end is not to have the test result being "good thing happens" vs "nothing happens" (the latter being the wasted turn). Instead, the good thing can always happen, but a failed test means something bad will also happen. For example, if the test is to scale a cliff, then a failure means you reach the top having taken some damage.
I like randomness to be optional - for example, the example to scale the cliff could have a quick variant where I have to perform a skill test (and suffer consequences of failure such as taking damage) and a slow and safe variant where I automatically succeed but the latter takes an additional action (or requires more energy, or more time, or whatever). I think Tainted Grail has something like this.
I'm looking at a combat mechanic where you can choose to roll some number of dice or just deal some damage specified by the character's card. The idea is that the players can either take the safe option, or embrace the chaos (potentially getting better results, potentially getting worse results).
John: I like your idea of always having a good thing happen (whether it's passing the skill test or simply providing something good, like in The 7th Continent), and when you fail, something bad also happens. I also like the idea of having an element of certainty or an element of chance (Robinson Crusoe has something like this that I completely forgot to mention in the video).
In Arkham Horror LCG there is no bag building aspect. The bag is filled at the start of the game to vary the difficulty setting and doesn't change during the game. I only have a few expansions so I don't know if this changes with later expansions.
I think the key for making a skill check, however you implement it, not cause a lost turn is to graduate the success. If you do very well, excellent things happen. If you do OK, something OK happens, and if you do something poorly, something bad happens. This may not end your turn, and a failed check might just lead the player down a different path, that might be as interesting as if they'd succeeded wildly. However, to keep the stakes high, you should make it harder to be successful on the poor success check. BTW -- One more interesting skill check to look into. The relatively new game Nemesis which was published thru KS by Awaken Realms. When you fight a monster, you flip over a card after you hit it. If the monster has more damage than the number on the card, it dies. If not, it's still alive. So you never really know how many HP the monster has. It might take 6 to kill it this round, and you only had 4. But you hit it again, and now it only needed 3 to die, so it dies. The twist is that on just a FEW of the cards in the deck, the monster escapes. And if it escapes into a tunnel you can't follow it thru, it comes off the board, and loses all it's damage. (Thematically, the next monster you encounter, might not be the exact same one of that type, so it has no damage.)
I know this is already a month old, but in case you are still reading this comments I would like to point towards and other RPG system - Call of Cthulthu (by Chaosium, they recently released a starter set which can even be bough as a PDF so I got into it and it is quite interesting and different to D&D adventures).
You have skill scores similar to D&D, but they range from 0 to 99. On your character sheet you have all your skill scores, half of their values and 1/5th of them (it is quite some writing when creating a character, but as you'll see it leads to quick gameplay).
When you get a check you have to roll percentile dice and succeed if you roll equal or lower to your score - what that means - higher score is better (so the scores are still intuitive), but no math is rquired and you know instantly what your odds are (I've seen in D&D someone stopping to think what their odds for a certain skill are), you have exactly "your ability score"% chance to succeed. The 1/2 and 1/5 values are used for hard and impossible skill tests (I don't remember the exact names of the difficulty levels, but you get the idea).
So even for harder checks you just have to quickly check a single number, no math.
But than on top of that you can spend luck points to reduce your roll. So you also have the system where you can spend a very important resource to get a success (luck itslef is also a skill and you will permanently reduce your chances of succeeding luck rolls by doing this)
And than there is one last possiblity to "modify" the outcome. Whenever you fail a skill check you can push it - you have to describe to the DM how you will try to force the issue, BUT if you fail a pushed check there must be severe consequences.
E.g. bad guys are trying to force their way into your room, you try to climb out of the window (lets say 4th floor) and you fail the check. Failing here doesn't come with any additional penalties except that you didn't manage the thing you tried (lets say the DM describes it as you trying to find something to hold onto while climbing, but you could't quickly find anything, so you never actually tried to do it). Now you say you'll tear some sheets appart and tie them to a bedpost and use them to try to quickly climb down - you will get another check, but this time it is assumed that you force the issue so if you fail this time your makeshift rope will tear and you will drop (the system is even more dependant on the DM then D&D)
So in summary you can almost always get a re-try, but you know that failing it will get you into a bad situation (not necessarly killing you, but it can often be a possiblity)
That is really interesting! Thank you for sharing. I particularly like the option to one last chance to get it right...with severe consequences.
I’d love to see something like Near and Far where the resource you spend to guarantee success is variable. If I have to build a fire, I can probably do it eventually but it will take a long time compared to someone experienced. If time is a critical component to the game, spending it poorly could end the game sooner than you’d like.
In a fight though, the spent resource would need to be something like strength or life to show you escaped but are exhausted, or hurt.
A third could be use of supplies. If I can build an item efficiently, I don’t need as many resources as if I screw it up the first time and need to use more resources to try again.
Go with the powered by apocalypse technique. If you want them to try, make sure they get a significant benefit for failing.
I am not sure whether or not you have checked the new upcoming games (scheduled to release this September), called Tidal Blades. When I see the gameplay, I get the sense of "balanced" skill test, just as near and far you have mentioned in the video. you might want to check that out.
Nevertheless, can't wait to see your new game!!
Thanks Ricky! I'm a backer of the campaign, and the skill tests with those custom dice look awesome!
I really like the skill checks from Mansions of Madness with the difference values for each skill and have a die roll to determine success. I agree that the worst thing is having wasted turns on those skills checks. I would prefer to use clues has auto successes and not use them only when you have a clue symbol on the die roll.
Another one that looks interesting (haven't tried it yet) is the skill checks on Lord of the Rings Journeys in Middle Earth. This one look even better because of the Scout that you do at the beginning of the heroes turn, so you can put the cards you are interested in on top of the deck and the others at the bottom, refining the success rate. Again, you have the same issue as in MoM since you don't have anything to give you Auto successes but with great consequences.
Maybe have the same thing as in LOTR Journeys in Middle Earth but you can discard cards from the deck into the discard pile for each auto success, and each time you have to reshuffle your deck in those situation you need to pay something (life for example since you are exceeding yourself). Or maybe you have limited times you can use this auto success per game and after that you need to take one damage (for physical checks) or sanity (for intelligence/lore checks). Just my 2 cents.
Hey thank you for your analysis you talk about a lot nuances I did not see about the mechanis itself…. I especially liked when talked about consequence (achieving or not the skill test) in some games of the games you were describing and I feel this is a big part of the questioning, after the skill test. All of the other mechanics : mitigation, information (push)/luck, using of other resources … all of the decision is based on the consequences. Of course wasting a turn is a consequence, but some games will throw at you some real big consequences of you don't succeed. I felt like the cool part about «winning» the skill test in Arakam Horror the card game or the Power card in Aeon’s End wasn't that I won something is that I didn't get the consequences. Although no example comes right, sometimes it's the opposite, the bad consequences are not that big if I'm not able to do it, but I really want to get the thing. I feel that it is the result of the skill test that makes the decision process interesting. Sometimes you don't even know what will or you know it in some amount, like in Robinson you know that if you don't achieve a test you'll be in trouble but you don't know how much…. Also Robinson adds a narrative to the skill test which is another resolve bit itself.
I don't know if my comment adds anything interesting to the discussion, but I feel that we need to analyse all this mitigation mechanic in front of the consequences that the player will have.
I cannot make any statement, however, about what are the bests consequences in terms of fun in gameplay or information that it's given to the player or correlation between player mitigation abilty and consequence. But I feel like the outcome is part of the skill test, and is a big part of the enjoyement.
Sorry if some mistake sounds weird English isn't my first language and sometimes it shows.
I like the example of variable consequences if you fail. You still fail, but something interesting happens (and maybe it's not even a bad thing)--I like that.
Forgive me if this has been mentioned already. How about if there are different types of skill checks, let there be different types of rewards from those checks. The easier tests give you lower rewards whereas the harder skill checks give you greater rewards.
Then you can add even more modifiers to those checks. For example, the skill check you choose is to talk to the creature. If you come in the low range it gets mad and attacks anyway causing you to fight it. Getting a mid range skill check would just frustrate the creature and you pass but no other rewards. And for getting the high end of the skill check would be they give you a valuable piece of information.
That's kind of the core concept in my game, except you don't have multiple options within each check. Like, you can talk to the creature or fight the creature, and talking might be easier than fighting, but there aren't different levels of difficulty when talking to the creature.
Jamey Stegmaier I personally prefer rolling dice like Arkham Horror rather than flipping cards such as Gloomhaven. So that being said, if my character has a set skill level, I would suggest equipment (swords, bows, spells and other buyable or learnable attributes) to help mitigate those rolls and with that other rare commodity (like the hearts from Near and Far) even further help with that skill check.
I played ‘clank in space’ and I think when the bad guy (lord .....??) comes into play I guess there is a skills test when the cubes are removed from the bag and what’s in the bag for your colour is determined by other decisions and cards played from your deck. If that makes sense.
Might not be classed as a ‘skill test’ 🤷♂️
That makes sense! I actually just played Clank yesterday (for the 30th or so time--I love the game), and I thought about mentioning it, but I didn't quite consider it a skill test in the traditional sense of the word, as you're not comparing your character's skill to any threshold set by the game.
Jamey Stegmaier yeah thought I might be misinterpreting what a skills test was. Quite tense when you know you have a few cubes in the bag of your colour 😬 looking forward to the new game. Waiting for wingspan to be available again as missed the boat on that.
Do you have any additional insights or best practices for skill tests?
(Maybe) For some inspiration here is my skill test mechanism (the tldr version):
- # of skill rank = # of automatic successes
- You roll to determine additional successes
- Each success chips away at the task's "health." Some tasks you can only get one attempt at. Some you get multiple.
- Each character has called "Drive" that can be used to add to it but I don't know the exact rules for how it is gained, how it's used, and the costs just yet. (Similar vibe to Hearts in "Near and Far")
Thanks for sharing! So, say it's a skill test of 6, and my character has 3 of that skill. I roll a certain quantity of dice (what determines that quantity?), and the target of the test "remembers" the number of successes. I can also spend drive to gain additional successes.
Overall I think you're on the right track (though I'd recommend testing it to see if it's a little too much to manage, particularly the idea of the target remembering the successes). It's also missing one ingredient I mentioned in this video: Some control over input (how much do you want to risk). You could potentially adjust that to a push-your-luck mechanism.
@@jameystegmaier Completely forgot to mention the how you determine your success. Currently, you roll a d20 and based on the result it determines the number of additional success. 1-4 = +0, 5-9 = +1, 10-14 = +2, 15-19 = +3, and a 20 = critical success (currently looking at what exactly that means). I am looking at other alternatives using d6s as well (like using 3d6 and on a 4+ you get +1 success; if you get 2 6's or triples you get a critical success).
Also should have mentioned, that it will be a tabletop rpg so will be more similar to D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, etc.
In terms of the "health" of the task, the GM manages that but I am pretty sure you are right that it may be too much for them to keep track of.
When it comes to control over the input, I think the best way is you decide how much "Drive" you spend. I have a lot of thoughts on the cost, drawbacks, and limitations of that.
Appreciate you taking the time to reply!
(sidenote: been using and loving Milanote for keeping track of all of my notes and thoughts for my game)
@@fatesreforged Thanks for clarifying. I'm personally not a big fan of d20s--there's so much variance in them compared to d6s or even the fun-to-roll d12s.
Also, I have a much more recent video on this topic: ruclips.net/video/qVePlqWZkmM/видео.html
@@jameystegmaier Thanks for the help! Definitely have given me stuff to think about
Very interesting video. I never thought designing a game was easy, but you highlight how much there is to think about.
For your new game you're currently designing, I'm wondering in terms of encountering the same monster/creature again and whether their skill test should be the same: could there be an element of the creature "remembering" something about you from the first encounter? And/or you remembering something about them? So the fight could play out differently the second time somehow?
I guess I think I would find it really interesting and enjoyable if the second (or third or fourth!) time you encounter an NPC, that they remember something about you and it's not the same encounter every time.
I've played Legacy of Dragonholt and I really liked that (for the most part) what you had done before had an effect on your next encounter with that NPC. I don't want to give away any specific Legacy of Dragonholt spoilers, but I'm sure you will know what I mean.
Of course I don't know how this idea fits with how your game is going to play.
Helen: Thanks for your note. That aspect of "remembering" is something that Time Stories and The Reckoners do well. I'm not sure it quite works in my game, but it's a good idea, and I'll consider it. I also like the way Legacy of Dragonholt does it.
In your game example your different scenarios sound like they should used different types of skill checks. So I would like the version where the different characters would have different skills at different levels. This could be a set level that you increase, maybe with experience, throughout the game or a base which would include a dice roll or card drafting to get the total. Then to keep with your want for non waisted turn you could have a mechanism for spending something in order to increase you skill by x or retolling/drawing.
Another mechanic for increasing and/or adding skills is to adding to your character. This could be through items, knowledge/experience, allys.
As far as wanting the player to make the best option not just the easiest could be done in a few ways. 1. Show the rewards so you can see that talking gives the best reward but my barbarian might have a hard time accomplishing it. 2. Let characters have a main ability/skill and if they pass that type of skill check the reward I'd increased.
I noticed the cat in the window was not moving until you talk about 7th Continent ??
He's a fan. :)
I looked at the comments and I didn't see it. Quick clarification on House of Danger. You have two things that change in a skill challenge. If you fail a roll, the danger meter goes up, you can try again, and the danger meter might go up again, and eventually you'll hit the top, needing a 6, if you fail, it resets to the original point, at that point in time, you lose some psychic ability. And then you can repeat the process again, so if you're bad at rolling dice, you can eventually take yourself down to little to no psychic ability.
Thanks for the clarification, Peder!
I'd be interested in an a Morality or Ethics system in a game where things are built over time. So for example, if I build a group of negotiators they could have issues fighting the monsters they have been negotiating with or if I had a nation of spirit worshipers they may have problems hunting the nearby bear cave.
How you looked at the indie RPG Apocalypse World by Vincent and Meguey Baker? You may also want to read the classic indie RPG Sorcerer by Ron Edwards. I think that you'd find it enlightening.
Thanks! I'm not familiar with those.
@@jameystegmaier I think that you would love how they tackle conflict resolution in their respective game designs.
Personally, I don't like having the ability to guarantee a success for every check. I haven't played Near & Far but the skill checks as you describe them don't sound interesting to me. It seems like that only choice to be made is whether you should pay for a win or not. It might work if the resource for those "auto successes" are very limited but it seems like the tension wouldn't be there.
To take the classic D&D example, whatever the odds are, there is always the chance of a automatic success or automatic fail (natural 20 or natural 1). In Arkham Horror LCG there are the "automatic success" and "automatic fail" tokens in the draw bag so that there is always a chance to succeed or fail. In Gloomhaven there is the "crit" and "miss" cards. I think that constant possibility of failure and chance of success (however small) is what creates that excitement for skill checks.
And as others have pointed out, a failed skill check doesn't have to mean "nothing happens". Instead it could mean something bad or unfavorable happens. Perhaps failing the lockpicking check causes the guard to be alerted. Or maybe a failed conversation check means the character will now require payment before speaking with you. Or maybe a failed attack is a glancing blow that deals half damage. There are a lot of options beside pass/fail.
It's good to avoid null turns but that is the opposite of high stakes! (It is the side I prefer). I also prefer solid after the fact consumables (like N&F hearts) not random ones like re-rolls you buy in advance (5e D&D Inspiration) or even after (AH 2e).
A Feast for Odin has something like Near & Far - you see what you need to spend after you roll the dice. It also has compensation for failed turns - some other resources & maybe some meeples back.
Arkham Horror LCG has multiple actions in each turn so it is rare that a whole turn is wasted even if you fluff some dice rolls (token draws) though misery & frustration are thematic there. Eldritch Horror for example can certainly feed you wasted turns, these often cascade into more wasted turns as your actions the following turn are constrained, and risk failing some more.
When I played 4e D&D, the most boardgamey edition with long infrequent feeling turns, I hated classes that staked everything on one roll each turn. I like to have something to mitigate this either classes that made multiple attacks so they were likely to get SOMETHING done or classes with built in low variance actions so they always achieved that at a minimum. Examples would be clerical healing or automatic status effects that were applied eg set something on fire but roll for extra damage. It is less of an issue in other editions where you often fly through turns but you can have while evenings where you feel you personally might as well not have been there.
Something like that where you always achieve a minimum result can help minimise the frustration of wasted turns.
You should check the "mastery" system in HeroQuest (the RPG) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeroQuest_(role-playing_game)#Game_mechanics
It fits your point that a master archer will only fail in very difficult circumstances.
Also, it's a non-binary system that cares about the quality of a success (or a failure), not just if the check was passed or not.
Hi ! Justs a Thought, I am developing a card game (I ve never pushished a game, i do this as hobbie but i can only dream to do it someday) I saw your video and thought maybe for your game. You can have like a stanima stat, that your characters start the adventure with, and thats what they can spend. If they go to "0" they start to have some negative consequences, I just thought of this watching your video. In my card game if my characters go to "0" they are gonna start to take damaged, and they can have maybe some cards that can play with that fatigue in a positive side or the enemy might start capturing (KO) the characters or eliminate them. Good luck with your games Jamey, i loved charterstone, and I wish you the very best.
Thanks Diego! That's a little bit like what Near and Far does, though I like the twists you've added.
I don't know if I understood the example of your game well, but you say a player has to discard a certain number of cards if he wants to pass a test. So a threshold for defeating a monster(fight) may be 3. In order to achieve that, a player may discard 3 cards with swords(for example) shown on them. This way it's certain that he'll pass. However, my idea is: a player may also choose to discard LESS than required(for example only 2 cards with appropriate symbol) and then try to draw a random card from the deck. If he draws a proper symbol, then hooray! He made a success spending only two cards. But if there's no symbol that he needed, then a test is failed or at least only half-successful(or you could think about "range of success/failure", the more symbols you lack then it's worse but it's never a wasted turn unless you don't spend anything). This way, a player has a meaningful choice: do I want to spend more, but be certain about the outcome, or do I want to push my luck and hope that I draw the thing I want?
Sorry if anybody has already come with such an idea but I haven't been able to read thoughout all 76 comments :) Thank you for this video, it made me think about some things!
Thanks, Damian! I really like that idea. It reminds me a little bit of the system in Robinson Crusoe where you can use 2 workers to definitely pass a test or 1 worker with a risk involved.
I’m a fan of Tikal and Mexica and if you have played any of the mask trilogy they use an action point allowance system. 6 points each turn. This got me thinking about how this could be implemented in other ways. I have little knowledge of your game but My thinking is this.
Example
Character (A) an Archer has 10 action points to use of his turn. Due to him been talented with a Bow the use of the bow cost his 1 point from his allowance while taking a skill test that involved the Bow/ archery skill.
Where as the same character in a close hand to hand combat the use of a blade may use up 4 action points.
No action is out of reach from any hero but their skills set the number of action they are able to do each turn.
Either do may actions that the Character excels at or fewer action that he is only ok at.
This places the decision back on the players on what type of turn they will have.
These talent could be modified by card effects and or die roll similar to the Near and far method. (I’m and fan of this method of near and far.) either adding more action points to a character or reducing the cost of an action to make a character better at it.
Thanks for sharing this here, Matthew! That's a really interesting way of using action points during combat or other skill tests.
Rather than playing cards from their hand with known values, perhaps incorporate having the players revealing cards from the deck. Blackjack style; pushing their luck, and hoping not to bust.
Thanks Keith! That's actually along the lines of the system I've been working on.
As to variable strength. Fight a shop assistant and a boxer, they are the same creature after all. ☺
Good lord, no, don't fight the shop assistants. Not since they started understanding about fireball bank shots.
Um. You probably haven't even played NetHack, though.
This is the same as a checkpoint in video games