| HoloDust said: I'd say that resolution mechanic goes hand in hand with progression system - personally, this is where I think it should start. Something like D20+modifiers vs DC of D&D 3e/4e/5e has different probabilities (and progression) than something like 3d6 under of GURPS, d100 under of RuneQuest/Call of Cthulhu/BRP/Mythras, d6 dice pool (with 6 being success) of Mutant Year Zero engine, highest of d4 and your skill of Savage Worlds, 2d20 under of Modiphius's Fallout or Star Trek and so on, especially since some resolution mechanics don't give just binary Success/Fail, but level of success as well. |
In an RPG that has dice as the main way to determine a lot of what happens, I’d say dice are in fact an integral part of the progression system, so I agree with you. Which dice are used, how many of them can be rolled, how many times, what the threshold for success is… These are all things that directly affect how the game and the character(s) progress.
And they also naturally add randomness, which should be included to a certain degree in all RPGs one way or another, because it reduces predictability. Determining which aspects of the core loop are affected by randomness, and to what extent, plays a very important role in how the whole progression is carried through and how interesting it is for the player(s): too little randomness and the game can feel dull; too much and it can become arbitrary and frustrating. And non-binary resolution adds a nice extra layer of depth to that randomness when done well. =)
For the OP: I focused on video games in my previous post, but designing a tabletop game is a really nice way to start making a playable experience, specially (but not only) if your primary interest is just designing gameplay mechanics (I have a chess-like game "created" this way): no coding, no worrying about sound and music, no need for fancy graphics if you’re just casually testing with friends or family… Just pure, raw game design (and at most narrative if you wish). And this actually makes it a lot more viable to create an RPG game without/before all the fuss that comes from developing it. So a tabletop RPG may not fit perfectly with the idea that you have in mind, but, at the very least, you could extrapolate a lot of the stuff you'd learn.
I'm mostly a lurker now.
