Dirk: Aw, man. Jay totally bailed on us for this week's design diary for Frayed Knights! What a wuss!

Arianna: I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. He's been really busy with stuff. Including our game.

Benjamin: You mean that game where he tries to KILL US? Yeah, thanks, good luck with that. He can take his time. He should be spending his time making blog entries, not battles!

Chloe: So what do we do now? I mean, we're here, he's not, and there's supposed to be an update on the progress of the game, and I'm already bored.

Dirk: Do you guys want to play cards or something? Maybe some of the readers might want to join in...

Benjamin: Our cards were eaten by that horn-tailed slithering masticator we fought last week. And all the shopkeepers in Torville are prohibited by that ordinance from last year from selling playing cards to you or anybody known to associate with you.

Dirk: Oh, yeah. Hey, she never told me she was the mayor's daughter until after she'd lost the game. So it wasn't really my fault!

Arianna: Nobody wants to hear about how you beat the mayor's daughter at strip poker, Dirk.>

Benjamin: Hey, now that you mention it, I am a little curious about that story...

Arianna: No! We are not going there! Let's talk about the game instead. More specifically, characters. Like... uh, Dirk.

Dirk: Oh, hey, more about me is always a good thing.

Arianna: No, I mean the statistics and attributes that make up all characters in the game. Every character has five primary attributes: Might, Brains, Reflexes, Charm, and Luck. The normal human range of these attributes is a value from 1 to 10, five being average. Monsters can exceed a ten, as can higher-level characters.

Benjamin: Those are used directly as modifiers for any action. For example, any time you hit a creature with your sword, you get a bonus to damage based upon your Might score. Anything above a five gives you a bonus. Anything below a five gives you a penalty. There are also secondary attributes, which are based upon those primary scores, your level, and your class. The secondary scores include things like health, endurance, base attack score, base defense score. and so forth.

Dirk: But that's not the whole story. You've got classes and levels, too. Like me - lots of class. I'm a rogue, actually. There are rogues - the best class - warriors, sorcerers, and priests. Take a wild guess which of us is which. You've also got SKILLS. Especially for me people like me. It's all about the skills. Some examples of skills are "Social" - talking to people, and "Stealth" for sneaking around. Most of the time when there are checks being made in the game, it's a skill check. With attribute bonuses thrown in.

Arianna: And then there are feats.

Chloe: The game even tracks what kind of feet you have? That's a very detailed game! My feet are very cute.

Arianna: No, not your feet, feats, as in feats of strength. Those are special abilities characters possess to make their skills work in special ways. Or that give them bonuses under special conditions.

Chloe: Okay. That's a lot of numbers. You know I love numbers as much as the next girl - especially when counting sparklies and money and stuff. But how does that tell you how many people I blew up with my fireball?

Arianna: Ummm.... I'm not sure. Oh, hey, Jay left his design document lying around ... I'm sure he won't mind if I borrow some of it and post it publicly up on the Internet, will he?

Dirk: Well, if he does, it's his own fault for ditching on us. I say post away! Besides, the system is just elaborating on what he did in Hackenslash, and that game sucked anyway!

Arianna: I know I'm going to regret this, but here goes:

Task Resolution

Any non-automatic action in the game is determined by a random check of the character’s adjusted score versus a check against the defender’s adjusted score or the difficulty level of the task being attempted.

There are three forms of task resolution: Simple, Tiered, and Damage checks.

Simple Resolution

For simple task resolution, a random number is generated between one and the attackers / actor’s adjusted skill score. This is the “action” roll. The “defense” roll is also generated as a random number between one and the defender’s adjusted skill score, or the difficulty score for actions not actively opposed by another character. If the defense roll is higher than the action roll, then the action fails. Otherwise, it succeeds.

Tiered Resolution

Tiered task resolutions are exactly the same as simple task resolutions, except there’s a chance that the action may succeed or fail in an exceptional way. In the case of an exceptional success, the acting character may receive additional bonuses. For exceptional failures, Bad Things may happen to the acting character, or the defending character may receive a bonus. The actual results are dependent upon the type of action being taken.

Tentatively, for tiered results, if the defense roll is five or more times higher than the action roll, the attempted action results in exceptional failure. If the action roll is five or more times higher than the defense roll, the action is an exceptional success.

Damage Checks

For damage checks, a random roll is made from 1 to the maximum damage value. In addition, an armor roll is made from 1 to the total armor (minus the armor piercing value of the weapon). The armor roll is then subtracted from the damage roll, and the result is the total amount of damage done to the defender. If this value is zero or less, the defender takes no damage.

Group Skill Checks

Some skill checks (particularly skills like Perception, Stealth, Social, and Empathy) will be “group checks”. This skill is based upon the highest (adjusted) rating of any individual character in the group. Every character in the group that has an adjusted rating of at least half this ability will provide a +2 bonus to the effective rating when it is rolled.

Weapons and Armor

To attack with a weapon, the character’s attack roll has a maximum of their Attack Skill + Melee Skill (if it’s a hand-to-hand weapon, or with natural attacks like claws or fists) or Ranged Skill (if it’s a ranged weapon, like a bow), plus any other bonuses from equipment.

The defense roll has a maximum of the defender’s Defense skill plus their Dodge skill, plus any other bonuses due to equipment.

If the defender is using a shield, they get an additional bonus to their roll based on their Shield skill and their shield’s Maximum Shield Bonus, whichever is lower. If the character’s shield skill exceeds the shield’s Maximum Shield Bonus by 3 or more, then this excess is divided by three and added to the Defense skill roll maximum.

Assuming the hit lands, the max damage is calculated, and used to generate the damage roll (the action roll). The armor level is also calculated, but is handled a little differently. Rather than comparing the defense roll of the armor against the damage roll, the defense roll is actually subtracted from the action roll. The remainder is the damage done to the target, if positive. If zero or negative, the attack does no damage, as if it were a miss.

Benjamin: Zzzzzzzz......

Dirk: You know, we really should have talked about ME instead!

Labels: Frayed Knights, Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:05 AM (Permalink)