« IGDA, Indies, & SIGs (Oh My) | Home | Murder, Sex, & Drugs »
Rev03: Exert Your Influence
By Corvus | June 30, 2009
This post is the eighth in an ongoing series explaining the basics of Rev03, the RPG system underlying the HoneyComb Engine. Did I say in the last post that we were going to talk about item and world creation?! I lied. Lied, I tell you! In point of fact, today I am going to talk a little bit about interacting with the world and the newest component of Rev03–the Challenge Track.
The interaction mechanic for Rev03 is pretty simple and designed to share the storytelling power. I’m going to use combat terminology to describe how it works, because it most effectively allows me to explain all three elements of the Challenge Track.
The center track is an indicator of time. ‘Tellers place a token on this track on the number that matches the maximum value of their Poise influence. This gives ‘tellers with a higher Poise, a greater initiative. If the narrative dictates a surprise attack, or one ‘teller clearly has an edge, then adjustments should be made for this. The ‘teller prime then calls out Ticks and ‘tellers slide their tokens up the track, one hex per tick. When a ‘teller hits the top hex, numbered 9, they either call out, “Ready,” or, “Hold.” They also move any exerted will that lies on an Influence into the expended will hex, and an amount of expended will (as determined by the value of their Life/Control) back into their Source.
If they hold, each subsequent tick allows them to repeat the preparatory actions of hitting the ready hex, meaning they can reclaim more Will with each hold. They may also use holds to time their actions to correspond with the other ‘tellers. If they call out, “Ready,” they take an action.
First, the ‘teller declares which Influence they intend to use–Mastery, Persistence, Design, Poise, Sleight, or Charm. The Body Mind and Spirit Influences are special-case interpretations of the six core influences and come into play with the specialties wheels (which is new take on the handling of Professional specialties since I Iast posted and includes a Body Wheel, as well as a Mind (Psionics) and Spirit (Magic) wheel).
Next the ‘teller determines, with the help of the ‘teller prime if need be, what the difficulty level of the action is. This uses the left-most table of the Challenge Track, which presents the four challenge levels in descending order from safest (yellow) to most dangerous (red) and numbered 0 through 3–Uncontested Mundane, Contested Mundane, Uncontested Extra-Normal, Contested Extra-normal. Mundane actions are anything we can picture a human doing. Extra-normal is other than that, whether it’s casting a fireball, probing a mind, or picking up a van. The challenge level number, the small number on the left, is the amount of will you must exert to meet the challenge level before rolling a d10 to determine your success. The larger number is the amount of will you must exert if you want to buy an automatic success (a 6 on the result table). The d6 and d10 indicators are there to show what sort of die they’ll be rolling against if applicable.
Uncontested actions are any actions that don’t involve another character potentially working against you. Contested actions are any actions taken against another character, even if they aren’t in a position to immediately defend themselves.
It should be noted that uncontested actions aren’t without difficulty. Picking a lock is a mundane contested action, but the lock will have a difficulty rating of 1 through 6 (which might be set by the ‘teller prime, or just determined by the roll of a d6). It should also be noted that buying a success on a contested action (such as in combat) won’t always guarantee you a success if your opponent is able to defend and rolls a natural 7, 8, or 9. They can even buys their own automatic success, and force a standard resolution (keep reading).
This makes the automatic-success buyout a powerful but unwieldy tool. Will, once spent, is regained at a rate determined by the Life element, which has a maximum value of three. This makes it pretty easy to overextend yourself, which is quite dangerous because without available Will, you’re not able to do much other than run and hide. I have found that ‘tellers are eager to use those automatic successes at first, but quickly discover that it’s often better to trust the results of their favorite die.
The ‘teller moves the number of needed Will tokens from their source to the chosen influence, referred to as exerting their influence, and if they haven’t decided to automatically succeed, rolls a d10–allowing Fate to have an effect on their action. They compare the result of their die roll to the result table on the right side of the track. This gives the ‘tellers a suggestion as to how many hits (damage or effect) their action might have, and how it might effect movement–either of their own character or their opponent. Movement modifiers are applied to the tokens of the participating characters on their respective movement tracks. Red results are bad for the ‘teller’s character. Yellow results have some effect, but don’t modify movements rates and green results are very good for the ‘teller–having a greater potential for effect and allowing them to position themselves well for their next action. Taking this into account, the ‘teller describes their action and the effect it has on their opponent.
If the ‘teller receiving the action is also Ready, they may decide to defend, completing the same process, up to the die roll. Then the ‘teller with the highest roll gets to control the action, describing the success or failure of it and declaring any damages or movement penalties based on the difference between the die rolls. This is the case, even if they fail their defense by only rolling 1, 2, or 3 higher than their attacker.
It is fully expected that the ‘teller in charge of the action will try and give themselves the advantage in some way, setting up their next planned move. And while the ‘teller prime should help them come up with descriptions that are in keeping with the style of the narrative and guide them in setting appropriate damage levels and move bonuses/hindrances, they should also encourage them to find creative ways of turning failures to their advantage.
Both a natural 9 and a natural 0 are considered automatic criticals. 9 is a critical success. 0 is a critical failure. Both have a firm movement value of 6, meaning one of the combatants will move their token to 0, or the other will be placed on 6 and get an action the very next Tick. If your token is on 0, you must wait for every other character in combat to either hit ready, or land on 0 themselves before you can begin moving your token up the track again.
Once the ‘teller has finished describing their action, and the appropriate damage has been assessed, they reset their counter on the challenge track to the maximum possible value of the influence they just used, as modified by any movement penalties or bonuses. The will they exerted remains on the influence until they next hit the final hex on the track.
This is obviously a hasty overview of the system, which will receive a much more in-depth treatment in the manual. For example, there are ways to stack actions, modifying the effect or movement rates for subsequent actions. There are also combat effects that wear off, represented by tokens of course, and ways of calculating weapon damage maximums, movement maximums related to using complicated weapons, etc.
Tagged:challenge track, hon, Honeycomb Engine, rev03, rpg. | 3 Comments »
June 30th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I’ve got yet another visual suggestion! It really bothers me that the right table tilts inward diagonally and touches the center track. Have you tried/is it possible to make the outer tables vertical so they match the center track?
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:14 pm
I think I would need to see an in game example of a play by play to grasp the system properly.
July 2nd, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Well, stay tuned for an exciting Rev03 announcement!