I know I've mentioned this before and sent the link a handful of times, but here's the "official" version of how I want to story dice to be used, and how the base game should run, in my opinion.
Three Central Tenants:
- There is no one person who is the DM, GM, or anything. More specifically, instead of there being that one player sitting behind a screen controlling all the strings, the story, and the enemies and encounters, there's no screen. No one should have to prepare prior to a game, no one should be putting forth more work than anyone else in making the game run.
- Everyone has an equal amount of power over the game. This will be described later.
- The game is based on true cooperative storytelling. Unlike most RPGs which are cooperative storytelling, but with a single player controlling 40-100% of the story, with the players maybe making minor decisions(See also, traditional RPG video games), in our game everyone has the same amount of control. In a 3 person game, everyone controls 33% of the story, in 4 person, 25%, etc. More on this later.
Now then, onto the actual mechanics.
1. Each player creates and controls one or more "Protagonists"*
2. Players get 5 (five) "story dice" at the beginning of each in game day.** There use will be discussed in step 4. Note: Story dice do not stack. If you have 2 left over from the previous day, you do not add another 5 to them, you begin the day with only 5 dice. Ever. No roll over dice.
3. The players then begin play and set up a "scene", a scene is any sort of encounter that the players have with a world. Scenes can be, but are not limited to, when the players enter a new town, building, dungeon, etc., when the players are confronted by an enemy, NPC, etc., when players start a new day. Basically, anything that needs some sort of description is considered a scene.
Constructing a scene happens as follows:
a. Starting with the player with the most story dice, the players begin describing one important part of the scene each. These important parts include but are not limited to: a piece of scenery, a trap, an enemy, an NPC, an item, etc.
b. Continuing clockwise around the table, each player will describe one aspect of the scene as listed above.
c. When a full round is completed and it is back to the person who originally started describing the scene, that player will ask the group if everyone is satisfied with the scene. If the answer is yes, the players begin to play. If the answer is no, it goes around the group a second time, during the second time, if someone does not wish to add to the scene, they don't have to and can choose instead to skip.
d. After the scene is agreed upon, no more edits can be made without the expenditure of story dice, described in detail below.
4. While a scene is being played, players are allowed to spend their story dice to affect the game world. This is to add to the randomness of the story and help create "surprise" encounters and so forth. Story dice can be expended to do any of the following:
- Add an enemy
- Add an NPC
- Add a trap
- Add an item of importance
- Add a secret door
Story dice may not be spent in the following ways.
- Avoiding trap effects
- Giving oneself an item
- Improving one's rolls
- Avoiding death
- Giving yourself a power you do not have
- Improving any sort of ability, skill, or other score
5. A player can earn more story dice per day in the following ways
a. The player receives +1 story dice for every NPC he plays during that session.
b. If the player is playing a "major villain" (decided by the party upon his creation) they gain +2 story dice per in game day, that can only be used to benefit the villain
These dice can be used in the following ways:
- To summon minions for the villain
- To create a trap for the villain
- To give the villain a special item/spell/etc.
- To create an escape route for the villain
- Etc. The point being it directly benefits the villain and doesn't help the party
6. Control of enemies is split up between the party (Ex. if there are 4 people playing and the party is attacked by 8 zombies, each person plays as 2 zombies)
a. Players are encouraged (how?) to pay enemies to their fullest potential, as though playing one's character. For instance, a zombie wouldn't just stand there not attacking, it would swarm the party and try to kill as many Protagonists as it can.
7. Control of NPCs is up to the party to decide. Not only does it make it more fun trying to roleplay other characters but there are tangible benefits to this type of roleplaying and they are seen in game.
a. For each NPC a player plays per session, (s)he gain +1 story dice. Note: They only receive 1 die per NPC, so even if the NPC appears during the session 100 times, they still only get the 1 die.
*I like using the term "Protagonists" and "Support" better than PC and NPC for this game type because technically all characters are player controlled, making the distinction between PC and NPC nonexistent. If you have better terms, let me know.
**"Story dice" is just what I'm going with right now because I like the way it sounds and rolls off my tongue, but any sort of counter would work: coins, balls, marbles, whatever. Dice just seem like something that people (particularly RPers) would have lying around the house so that's why I've chosen them, but I don't see why it couldn't (or shouldn't) be something else.
So anyway, that's the gist of it, I'm sure there are issues and kinks with it, and feel free to edit and question it as need be. I plan to work on mechanics and the like over Christmas break and see if I could at least get something down for character creation, if we get the creation nailed down we can easily get combat and everything knocked out, start designing a bestiary, build classes (or not), whatever.
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