WIP on Mythos version 0.3

Okko, the board game, used during a play-test.

After two more games of Mythos I am re-thinking some of the rules both in terms of how they are presented to the players and a slight tweak of the mechanic.

If the basic assumption in Mythos is that an average guy is Average (3), then instead of writing, he is an average swordsman (3) we could just drop the number. It would be understood that if he attempted sword fighting, he would roll 3 dice, most of the time. We would then use a system of indicating how much better or worse a person is at a particular characteristic/skill/ability by using positive or negative modifiers, e.g. Good Swordsman (+1) or Very Good Swordsman (+2). Cognitively, for both the GM and player when attempting a resolution, you would typically go for 3 dice, unless something about your character indicates otherwise.


Here are the Difficulty levels as they currently stand:

2   Easy, Routine
3   Challenging, Moderate
5   Hard, Difficult
7   Very Hard, Very Difficult
9   Extremely Difficult
11 Heroic
13 Epic

'Heroic' and 'Epic' has not come up in my scenarios and I pretty much left it there for completeness.  Since the difficulties are simply an odd number progression, it is easy enough for role-players to figure out. It is down to the GM's call whether a conflict resolution is 'Heroic' or 'Epic'. Numbers-wise, a character with a +1 relevant attribute/skill has no chance succeeding at an Extremely Difficult level, the maximum his dice will show is 8 (he rolls 4 dice). The chances of him rolling an 8 are rather small as well.

Perhaps in line with how attributes/skills are presented now, I could likewise frame the Challenge (as I call it) in terms of modifiers to the dice rolled.

So a typical Challenge would have no modifiers. A Easy Challenge would actually add 1 dice to your roll, a Hard Challenge would remove 1 dice, a Very Hard Challenge would remove 2 dice.

The Challenge Chart might now look something like this:

+1   Easy, Routine
       Challenging, Moderate
-1   Hard, Difficult
-2   Very Hard, Very Difficult
-3   Extremely Difficult
-4   Heroic
-5   Epic

So now coming to the one of the key aspects of the system, how we would resolve Challenges. We define a Challenge as whenever there is a Dramatic stake in the outcome where success or failure is not certain.

The Challenge resolution would be resolve in the following fashion:

1. Player/GM frames the challenge and players describes the attempt.
2. Players rolls the Action dice after determining how many he would roll.
3. Players tend decide whether to add Drama Dice, and rolls and adds them to his roll.
4. Success/Failure is determined, Drama Dice are awarded accordingly
5. The Success or Failure at the task is narrated, and play proceeds.

Looking at this as a whole, I would say a player never rolls more than 5 Action Dice. If after modifiers in #2 he would be rolling more than 5, the Challenge should be considered an automatic success.

In the event at #2 a player would roll zero Action dice, he can still use Drama Dice as in #3, but, the first Drama Dice used, is changed to an Action Dice.

Next let's look at #4 in detail, determining Success.

In this modified system, the number of Successes are not matched against a Difficult level, it is all about the number of Successes showing on the dice, like so:

0 Abject Failure
1 Complete Failure
2 Partial Failure/Partial Success
3 Success, just
4 Good Success
5 (or higher) Splendid Success

And at this point, it seems to me we don't need the Drama Dice to roll with different outcomes, just keep it at 0-2, just like Action Dice. That would make the situation where someone would roll zero Action Dice, adds Drama Dice and needs to convert the first one to an Action Dice. Will try it in the next play-test.