[pilcrow]

In my system, DL2 is mostly about giving up free escaping. You can spend your entire sl2 career in DL1 and only go to DL2 when you're ready for the character to be ended. If you like the idea of receiving injury, it can still happen at DL1 if you want to.

The alternative is to only allow execution when someone is captured as a result of DL3. The problem with that is that antagonists should be more willing to face death than normal characters, and most people don't want to risk death to stop an antag

...?

Then that's completely at odds with the consequences given as the overview for the danger level, and you've completely lost me.
Keep character death to 'character death' danger levels.

[Poruku]

Sure, I'm fine with that. To be honest I did that because I thought people would complain that we can't execute antags without risking death

[Turadis]

Not that this is meant as a particular criticism of any one system or the other, but I'll note that in the super magical and high-tech setting of SL2, limb loss isn't actually that much of a hindrance. I've been around the block enough times to see a hundred prosthetic or magical limbs be grafted onto injuries like that, just as good as the real thing. It may or may not be lore accurate, but it's true. And for my money, with the existence of engineers, mechanations and now karakuri limbs, it at least strikes me as perfectly plausible in-setting that such a medical field would be well explored.

[Neus]

I imagine this is going to get a lot of varied answers, and I've drafted a few different ideas myself, but how complex/expansive are people hoping for a RP heavy dice-influenced alternative to be, and how do you view such a system playing out in practice? As an example, if you were going to try and RP/dice a battle instead of PvP, who is rolling for what, when do they roll for it, and how many times does this happen before the "result" is determined?

You don't need to prototype a whole dice system for this; I'm speaking very generally so I have an idea of what people think the 'flow' should look like.

Obviously, I have more thoughts on this topic than just that and I am working on adjusting the conflict rules. As I've said in the Discord, it will probably be an iterative process, with some things that are easier to marker or clarify coming first (ideally before the end of the grace period in a few days).

I'll discuss some other changes here and/or in the Discord when I have them to get some feedback prior to codifying them.

[AkaInuHime]

My thoughts on a rp dice system would be having broad categories like Athletics, Perception, Subterfuge, Knowledge, Magic, and Luck, but then you could take "specialties" within them that players can freely name. You have a pool of points to assign among them, perhaps with some sort of cap, perhaps with specialties costing half or a third of a proper point for each +1.

As far as when to determine the end of a conflict, or making it so any one person can't draw the spotlight too entirely during events, perhaps there could be some sort of fatigue system. The target number you try to roll to meet to succeed starts small but keeps going up by 1 each roll, but resets with a button you can use (with a chat message) when people agree that it's a new scene. (Time based resetting might encourage stalling rp.)

In events, just succeeding is all you need, while in PvP with opposed rolling, perhaps rather than comparing raw numbers most of the time, only successes and fails matter. Each roll risking an injury or other negative would add a natural, increasing danger, since at the start, opposed rolls would end in a bunch of double success "clashes", but once people start failing more often and getting hit and hurt back and forth it'll encourage breaking things off.

Ideally numbers and dice would be small so each point feels more impactful. Perhaps 2d6 so there's a bit of a curve to rolling, so you're very likely to succeed even at stuff you're not the best at when your fatigue is low, but there's a "hump" where stuff gets desperate.

[Skimmy2]

Personally If we're going with a Roleplay Dice System, I feel that we would get a lot of traction by having it tied to our Stats/Attributes.

So you are "Rolling Strength" or "Rolling Celerity", this creates a very intuitive system where each player knows exactly their character's strengths and weaknesses. Likewise this system will further tie Stats/Attributes to your character and encourage a physically strong character to actually have Strength, despite their "Build" not requiring it.

Downsides of such a system, of course would be having to "build" your character for either Combat or Dice, which shouldnt be understated.

[Poruku]

Here is a draft of a system for that I made a while back:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RFEo...p=drivesdk

If we used stats, people would simply build for rp combat. Stat rolls should be used for events instead

[Shujin]

I made a suggestion a while ago. and while I do not need it EXACTLY like that?

I would very much like it when Stats/Talents maybe even classes had an impact on certain things. And maybe even old school SL1 overworld skills that go along with it but in a more updated and refined way. Honestly, always loved that part of SL1.

I do not mind dice systems aslong as they are well done. Currently we use whats basicallya coinflip. Is it fair and balanced? yes. But its also boring and unimmersive when the top tier legendary assassin rolls a 17 and then gets beat by the heavy armor dude, that had never sneaked up on anything and with heavy astmah rolled an 18.

God do I hate our dice "system".

[Turadis]

So I've gone and talked at some length both about dice math in general https://neus-projects.net/forums/showthr...5#pid56125

And about my own dice system concept. One that is definitely not designed around it being a form of combat resolution, though. https://neus-projects.net/forums/showthr...?tid=11499 

I do think Dev is asking the right questions here. You can't make a good system until you narrow down what 'good' even looks like to you; what your 'design goals' are. How competent are the fantasy heroes we want to portray? How many things are they competent at? How often, if ever, should a novice character be able to outplay a master in a certain field? 

I won't repeat my own thoughts on the design goals I value here, you can check those links for that. I do want to outline a couple of concerns I do have.

1. What is a Sanctity check?

Or to be less facetious, I have considerable reservations about using attributes as dice modifiers. There are two main reasons for this: For one, attributes are abstractions. Sometimes, characters who are defined as 'strong' can't afford to build strength for game mechanical reasons. Sometimes, characters who aren't defined that way will need to. I don't only think a system like that would be unpopular enough to find itself mostly unused, I think it would actively harm diversity of characterization by just existing.

Secondly, attributes are not created equally. Times when a character would need to roll a strength or celerity check are reasonably obvious. But what about luck, or sanctity? I wager there are considerably fewer, if any at all. Would characters whose mechanical builds focus on those stats not just have inherent disadvantages in a dice system like that compared to characters who don't? If fairness is a concern, I strongly believe attributes are not the way to go.

I overall believe dice stats should be set independently of other game mechanics, as every alternative option suffers from similar problems to some (usually lesser) degree. But if they have to be derived from something that already exists, I'd much more readily recommend Talents, or some combination of multiple mechanics. 

2. Dice Battle

Imagine for a sec a soldier and a mage get into a dice-based fight and attack each other. The soldier rolls 1d20+STR or whatever the modifier is derived from. The mage rolls 1d20+WIL. Naturally these characters primary attacking stats are probably some of their best stats, and are likely comparable as their definitive best dice modifier. Say it's something really big like +15.

1d20+15 vs 1d20+15 is...Mathematically identical to our current system. Even if it were designed with defense rolls in mind, I can't particularly see it ending up much different. In practice, I think most iterations of dice-based combat resolution would end up used just as often as our current one, since the underlying probability is, in most cases, going to end up very similar to what it already is.

All of this is to say, I'm pretty skeptical of the addition of another dice-based resolution system to settle combat, specifically. At least in any form that could be described as simple. (And I kind of think it has to be pretty easily understood to catch on.) However, there are some smaller complexities that could add a bit of texture, like different degrees of success or failure if the difference between opposed rolls is particularly large or particularly narrow. Or some way to encourage or enforce a variety in one's approach, like awarding extra bonuses to subsequent rolls that use different modifiers then prior rolls. (I.E. Strength themed attack -> Speed themed attack -> Deception themed attack being rewarded over Strength -> Strength -> Strength. )

...Each roll risking an injury or other negative would add a natural, increasing danger, since at the start, opposed rolls would end in a bunch of double success "clashes", but once people start failing more often and getting hit and hurt back and forth it'll encourage breaking things off.

I do like AkaInuHime's concept here a decent bit though. Though the probability is more or less the same, the progression of being evenly matched to increasingly mounting danger does at least add considerable dramatic flair to a battle. I personally figure a 1v1 conflict is best resolved in about 5-6 sets of opposed RP posts. But that sort of thing is very up to personal preference.

3. Skill Checks

On the flip side, I could not be more in favor of dice based resolution being introduced for everything that is not fighting someone. In fact I'd go as far to say as the introduction of a classic skill check system would go a long way towards introducing new kinds of conflict into RP and events organically just by existing. We already sort of have chases with the fleeing rules. But off the top of my head...Opposed stealth attempts, magic rituals, tracking, magical dispel, poisoning, musical duels, contests of strength...And that's just PvP conflict, not even getting into the stuff eventmins could do with it.

Again, the link goes into detail on a version of this I really like. (Though I'm pretty fond of Aka's 'fatigue' suggestion getting thrown in.) I just wanted to point out the concept as being generally something I'd want to see. The actual conflict rules regarding it would probably be best if they were very light, or nonexistent, maybe outside of some updated fleeing rules.

[pilcrow]

Personally If we're going with a Roleplay Dice System, I feel that we would get a lot of traction by having it tied to our Stats/Attributes.

So you are "Rolling Strength" or "Rolling Celerity", this creates a very intuitive system where each player knows exactly their character's strengths and weaknesses. Likewise this system will further tie Stats/Attributes to your character and encourage a physically strong character to actually have Strength, despite their "Build" not requiring it.

Downsides of such a system, of course would be having to "build" your character for either Combat or Dice, which shouldnt be understated.

The trouble with building a dice system around the character attributes as-they-are is that they are highly skewed by their attachment to the mechanics. Unlike a typical tabletop system where a group of characters is likely to individually excel in completely different things because the system is designed around that from the get-go, a group of korvarans is going to excel almost universally in skill and (if a dodgie) celerity, because it is VITAL to build those to 60 scaled if you're using them, and those that don't aren't going to have ANY investment in those stats whatsoever.
This is a pattern repeated across the other stats to a lesser extent. Vitality tends to be leveled up to 40-50 because it's a very important stat, strength and will tend to be scaled up pretty high because they're primary attack stats, and san is often either a you don't have any or you have a LOT of it.

There's also the problem of what these things represent mechanically vs using them to make a dice roll. What's the kind of use-cases you expect for sanctity, vitality, luck, or resistance? There's small hints in how they're used mechanically as well as the stat descriptions, but they aren't really enough to round out a character's capabilities - and what a character is good at isn't always attached to those descriptions. A high-res character isn't necessarily out there being an expert on dark magic. A high-san character isn't necessarily a musician.

The only way I can see a dice system working in SL2 is if it's attached to a skill system instead, where you mark up what your character is good at and mark down what your character is bad at. This'd necessarily have to be divorced or at least insulated from stats, but that's.. fine, honestly. It's already a tricky game to satisfyingly fit the mechanics together with ICs.

As for using dice systems in PvP, it's a fiddly matter. I think above all else communication and consent needs to be encouraged, because in any case where a rigid dice system is used in place of that the system is failing, and you're going to see abuse cases (like leveraging the dice system for social pressure). As cool as it'd be especially for events, implementing a dice system to resolve conflict alone is just an easy out, in my eyes.