Creating My Own Game Mechanic

Whoo-boy! Hello again! I'm trying to get back onto my Tuesday updates, even though not much has happened since my super-late posting on Saturday. Also, ignore how late this update was posted today....

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As predicted, I didn't really have time to read or write anything new since Saturday. However, what I DID manage I'm soooooo excited about! Like, I know I said last time that I'd show off my picrew images that I made of myself, and talk about the game When the Past was Around, but... I already have a full blog post just talking about my prep work for Scum and Villainy, so... raincheck?

On Sunday, while I was reading through the rulebook to see what differences there are between Blades in the Dark and Scum and Villainy, I actually thought of a potentially fun House Rule mechanic for the game, especially since we're trying to merge the game with another RPG anyway.

To better understand the mechanic I came up with, I think I need to first explain what got me to think of it, as well as a little bit of the Forged in the Dark game mechanics. Forged in the Dark is the name of the game mechanics first introduced in the game Blades in the Dark. However, the creator John Harper welcomes people to make their own RPGs using the same mechanics, and thus Scum and Villainy - along with many others - was born. So, for ease, since I'll be inspired by Blades but prepping for S&V, I'll just talk about the established game mechanics as simply Forged in the Dark.

Good? Okay.

So, part of the Forged in the Dark character creation includes picking one NPC to be your friend - "a close relationship (a good friend, a lover, a family relation, or similar)." - and one NPC to be your rival or enemy. Well, I SAY "pick" but you basically design your friend and rival as well. See, each character architype a player can choose from has its own list of five NPCs, and the player chooses one to be the Friend, and one to be the Rival. However, the game just gives the broadest of strokes: a character name and their position in society, be it their main job or their social standing. From there, the player creates who this NPC is and their connection to the player's character.

For instance, Hubby's Blades character Ashlyn was a Lurk architype; they specialize in stealthy infiltration and burglary. The different NPCs Hubby could choose from included a beggar, a bluecoat (cop), a locksmith, a noble, and a city clerk. Hubby decided to befriend the noble. More specifically, he created the backstory that Ashlyn was in a relationship with the noble's daughter, and the noble continued to keep close ties with him even after the daughter passed. As for his rival, Hubby chose the locksmith because he liked the flavor of someone who constantly breaks into places and things having a rivalry with a locksmith.

Coincidentally enough, when the Oxboxtra crew started posting their game sessions of Blades in the Dark back in January, Andy Farrant had chosen the Leech archetype - saboteur and technician - but somehow stumbled his way into kinda-sorta having a locksmith as his rival as well. Instead of choosing one of the five NPC options - apothecary, psychonaut, corpse thief, blood dealer, and priestess - he created his own rival. Basically, he modeled his character Edvard Lumière off of Nikola Tesla, and created Edvard's own Thomas Edison: a man named Amadeus Astor. According to Edvard, Astor is a hack inventor who just steals other people's invention ideas and markets them as his own. He further claimed that Astor did this exact thing to Edvard multiple times, most notably when Edvard created the incandescent lightbulb. Astor, much like Edison, is a great salesperson and master of PR, so his brand is all over the city, and his highest seller is his line of locks and safes. So Edvard has made it his life's mission to prove Astor a hack by breaking every last Astor brand item he could find, such as cracking every supposedly impenetrable safe.

So, both Ashlyn and Edvard have this rivalry with lock manufacturers, and make it part of their life goals to master cracking every last one of this rival's locks to prove they aren't as good as everyone believes.

How does this relate to the mechanic I came up with?

In one of the Oxventure Presents: Blades in the Dark episodes, Edvard goes to pick a lock, and Luke, who is their Game Master this time instead of a player, does what's known as a Fortune Roll. Basically, if there is something that involves some sort of luck, but isn't directly affected by the players - and therefore would make no sense for them to roll an action for it - the GM can opt to roll to see how good their fortune is. In this occasion, Luke ended up rolling that the lock was an Astor brand, which ended up enraging Edvard. As I was reading through the Scum and Villainy rulebook and reread about the three main positions the players could be in at any given point of a job - Controlled, Risky, or Desperate - I thought back to Luke rolling to determine the lock's brand.

That's when I came up with the mechanic of a permanent Devil's Bargin. See, the Forged in the Dark games use standard six-sided dice for their action rolls. If a player wishes their character to do anything, they describe their intent to the GM, and the GM decides if it's simple enough to just happen or if the player should roll to see if they're successful. If the GM determines that a roll is needed because the results of the action aren't definite, the player then chooses which of their abilities best suits what they're trying to do, and roll. If a player rolls a 6, the action is a complete success. If a player rolls a 4 or a 5, it's a partial success. The action still succeeds, but with a complication. If the player rolls 3 or under, the action fails.

The players get a pool of dice in order to increase their chance of success, because only the highest dice roll is used. The points they put towards different action abilities on their character sheet give them a die per point for said ability. For instance, if they have two points in Stealth, they get two dice to roll. If they have three points in Sway, they get three dice to use that ability. If they only have one point in Tinker, they only get the one die. If they have no points, they can still attempt to use that ability, but now they roll two dice and take the LOWER number rolled.

The player can also choose to push themselves to add another die to their pool. This adds 2 stress to a counter on their character sheet. Their character gets a permanent trauma (hinderance) if their stress meter gets too high, and if they get enough traumas their character retires from the life of crime. Another player could also opt to add 1 stress to their counter in order to "assist" the rolling player, adding a die to the pool. So there are lots of ways for players to try to increase their chances of rolling a 4, 5, or 6.

The Devil's Bargain is just one more option. In the Forged in the Dark games, a Devil's Bargain is something the GM could offer the player for any given action. The player can accept the bargain and add a die to their pool without any added stress. However, as a Devil's Bargain, there's always another price. Regardless of how successful the player's roll, if they accept the bargain, this price will be paid. It could be that the crew gets more heat on them, and they are more likely to be arrested. It could be that there is unintentional collateral damage. It could be that their relationship with someone suffers greatly or their social standing plummets. It could be that they leave behind more evidence. The list goes on. The player, of course, could always decline the bargain, or negotiate the terms to something they're more willing to accept. The other players are even encouraged to offer Devil's Bargains or help negotiate terms. It's a fun mechanic that doesn't seem to be used nearly enough either when Hubby and I played or when the Oxboxtra crew plays.

Okay! To FINALLY get to my mechanic, now that you know the broad strokes of how the game works. I thought about the Controlled, Risky, and Desperate positions a character could be in. If the character is in a controlled position, even failing their rolls won't be of great consequence. If a character is in a desperate position, failing their rolls could create grave consequences. Risky is more-or-less the default position most of these heists take place in. I also thought about Ashlyn and Edvard and their rivalries with locksmiths. I then thought about a D&D mechanic called "Favored Enemy."

The long and short of this Ranger class feature is that the character has one thing in particular that they have studied obsessively. The rulebook has a list of options the player can choose from with such things as 'fiends' or 'giants' or 'undead' or 'orcs', etc, but a DM might allow the player to specify if the player requests something reasonable, such as a specific dragon that razed the character's village. Because of the intense study to master ways to take down this specific enemy, the character gets bonuses when confronting or tracking said enemy.

Side note, in the last D&D campaign I played in - that sadly died when the pandemic hit - Wolfhearted's character bashed down so many wooden doors that Hubby thought his character became properly experienced. Although it's not what the feat is intended for, and Wolfhearted's character wasn't a Ranger, Hubby still gave him Favored Enemy: Wooden Doors. He now had a bonus to attack rolls against wooden doors, this was to showcase that the character became skilled enough to masterfully find the weak points in any given wooden door, and therefore was capable of easily smashing through them. Plus, it was hilarious to us that a party member had inanimate objects as their 'favored enemy'.

So, anyway... I thought... what if I found a way to bring Favored Enemy into the Forged in the Dark games? Have it function kind of like what Hubby did for Wolfhearted and the wooden doors? What if there's a specific Devil's Bargain set up for each player, and it comes into play whenever that character's chosen rival is involved? Or, if they struggle with something consistently at first - such as locked wooden doors - and have purposefully roleplayed their character doing whatever they can to overcome that? What I came up with ended up as a multi-faceted Devil's Bargain, because it's technically a Devil's Bargain to accept a specific Fortune Roll agreed upon ahead of time.

My example that I sent Hubby revolved around Ashlyn's and Edvard's rivalries with locksmiths.

Specifically, every time that character comes up against a lock, they can opt for their Favored Enemy Devil's Bargain. If they accept, they get their extra die, but then the GM rolls the pre-established Devil's Bargain Fortune Roll.

• On a roll of a 6, the lock was designed by the rival. The character has spent so much time studying this design that they have mastered cracking it. There's still skill needed, and the character can still be distracted, but they are also in a controlled position.
• On a roll of a 4 or 5, the lock is indeed designed by the rival, but it's a new model the character isn't particularly familiar with. The character is in a risky position, and if they fail their attempt, they will gain a stress as they fixate on mastering this new lock.
• On a roll of 1, 2, or 3, the character doesn't recognize the lock maker. The character's expertise is specifically for their rival's locks, and so they are now in a desperate position. If the character's attempt fails, they will fill in 2 ticks on the Alarm is Raised clock. If no such clock is already started, start one and fill in the first two ticks.

Okay, quick aside. So "clocks" is another way of creating tension in the Forged in the Dark games, or a way of showing progress in general. The GM, with potential input from the players, creates these clocks to showcase how the world around the players is still moving. Most clocks either take 4 ticks, 6 ticks, or 8 ticks to fill, and once filled, the event the clock is for happens. These can be such things as: an alarm is raised, a guard finishes their patrol loop, a war breaks out between factions, a project a character is working on is completed, or an overheated engine explodes, etc. Actions players do could advance a clock, such as failing a sneaking action could add a tick to the Alarm is Raised clock, or assassinating one faction member and claiming it was in the name of another could advance the Factions at War clock, or pushing a car to go faster could add to the Overheated Engine clock. Alternatively, players could untick the clocks, slowing down the inevitable outcome. Things such as making it look like a stray cat made all the noise could lower the Alarm is Raised clock, or saving a faction member and claiming it was another faction's plan could lower or even erase the Warring Factions clock, or slowing the car or pouring some water on the engine could lower the Overheated Engine clock.

Going back to my house rule, though. The way I see it, the Rivals angle doesn't seem to get nearly enough gameplay, nor does the Devil's Bargain mechanic, as I mentioned. It is also fairly infrequent, for the most part, for a player character to come up against this "favored enemy," as it were. So why not amp it up on occasion? It shouldn't happen often enough to break the game by making it either too hard or unfairly easy for one player or too easy for all of the players for the game to no longer be fun anymore. Even if it does get that bad, it's easy enough for the playgroup to agree to retire this mechanic. 

However, including it also allows the player to really feel like their character is a badass if they choose the Devil's Bargain and get a 6 on the Fortune Roll. And even then, there's no guarantee they'll succeed, it just makes it easier for them to do so, and harder for them to irreparably screw up something their characterization says they should be an expert at (something that frequently happens to my D&D characters because dice hate me). I mean, I might even go so far as to let the player get an extra die if the Fortune Roll is a 6, just to make them even more excited about the outcomes. So, that would be their initial dice pool, plus one for accepting the bargain, plus a second one for that 6 on the Fortune Roll.

Let the characters be a bit overpowered for this ONE instance. Let this ONE specific type of Devil's Bargain have the potential of NOT including something bad happening to them (kind of defeats the title of DEVIL'S bargain, but ignore that). If allowing that little imbalance and inconsistency in game play means the players get enough dice to roll a six every time they come across their rival's locks, then that just adds to their legend and to the rivalry. Let them feel like a badass as their character basically looks at the lock and it comes undone.

Look, over lockdown, Hubby has really gotten into watching the streamer Sykkuno. Most recently, Hubby has gone back to watch Sykkuno's highlight reels of his gameplay on Grand Theft Auto V online. Specifically, the NoPixel GTA roleplay server. Sykkuno is almost ungodly good at the hacking, lock picking/hot wiring, and thermite detonation minigames in GTA. His character Yuno is fairly well known on the server as Los Santos' best hacker. Well, last night, Hubby and I went over to Sykkuno's Twitch stream, where Yuno and some friends decided to hit up the most secure bank in-game: The Vault. This is Top Tier if you're a GTA bank robber.

The whole stream was cursed with constant server crashes, and it kept FOREVER to get to the actual heist because of it, and even the epic getaway was ruined by a server crash. It was painful to watch because I felt the players' frustration about everything.

Point being, Sykkuno routinely told his chat over the course of about three hours, that it's insane that he was the sole hacker for this job. Most crews would have at least two hackers, that way if one got too nervous the other could tag in. There was something like 5 locks to hack through, and each lock has something like 5 puzzles to correctly answer in the hacking minigame. I'm always dumbfounded when I watch Sykkuno, because there is no way my brain could process the information fast enough, and yet he makes it look like it's no big deal. He's suuuuuuper humble about it too, which is adorable and so endearing.

Anyway, his friends just have him as their sole hacker because they know he's good. They all told him they trusted he could do this job. On top of that, they didn't really have the time to come up with back-up plans because of all of the server crashes. So, if Yuno couldn't crack into the safe, they were out roughly $100k that they had put into planning the bank heist, and they'd all be in jail. The poor guy was so nervous, he did indeed screw up three times, but, as luck would have it, they brought exactly enough supplies for him to still get all the way through and get away with the money. He's there on his stream sweating, a nervous wreck as he kept telling everyone, "This is it. This is the last shot. If I screw this up we don't have another option. Why do I keep being handed the last shot? What if I screw up?"

It was SOOOOOOOO tense, and both Hubby and I were holding our breaths as we watched him go through each hacking level. In the end, he just kind of wandered around going, "that was the worst I've ever done! I've never had to go to my third attempt of hacking anything!" Meanwhile, his friends are all cheering him on about how unbelievable he is at hacking; he's a hacking god! Sykkuno is panicked about nearly screwing it up, but all his friends see is "he got most of those on the first try, and QUICKLY too! It's like he looked at the door and it opened!"

I think my new Favored Enemy Devil's Bargain house rule might add that same type of tension and excitement. If the player gets that extra die for the 6 on the Fortune Roll, they just seem even more epic as they get through the lock with virtually no problem. If the player STILL fails, it will be all the more devastating and investing. Also, if the GM fails the Fortune Roll, and the character is now in a desperate situation because they don't recognize the lock, can you imagine the cheers if the player still manages to roll some form of success?

I really like this mechanic, guys. I think it can really add to the overall storytelling and engagement in the games. I'll want to come up with something like this for every player's rival so they all get that opportunity to be a badass on the table. If they wish to pick it up, cool; if not, no big.

I'm so excited about this!!!

I might also change the 4/5 roll on the Fortune Roll table slightly. I'm debating if I want to keep the one stress side effect. I want there to be a consequence, but it doesn't feel right. In Forged in the Dark games, after completing a job, the players have two downtime slots. They can use them to have their characters do a variety of things from healing to destressing to working on a project to helping take some heat off of their crew to improving the efficiency of their crew. I might change "add one stress" to "remove one downtime slot" because one of those slots is automatically filled with the character obsessively studying that new lock design.

Yeah. I think I like that better, but I also don't want the consequence be TOO severe, especially since there will still be a normal consequence to the failed roll, AND Forged in the Dark already has a mechanic called "entanglements." Basically, it shows the aftereffects of taking on the job in the first place. Some of these entanglements already have the potential to remove a downtime slot, and what if the player goes up against more than two locks? Granted, that's to the GM's discretion, but things I might have to think about and playtest a bit. Talk it over with Hubby some more.

I do like the flavor of losing some downtime to studying the lock, but I also like the flavor of the character getting stressed about more new locks they have to learn to master....

Either way, I'm just having so much fun with this! I can't wait to see what other bits of inspiration I'll get while continuing to prepare for our playgroup to start up this campaign! I mean, I know it's not writing per se, but it's still getting my mind thinking creatively again, and for the betterment of the overall story the campaign will tell.

Hubby and I were also talking about somehow recording our sessions this go, either via old-school tape recorder so I could better transcribe everything, or actually taking video of the session. Again, probably just so I could transcribe, but if we can get a set-up good enough, maybe Hubby and I will have a reason to use our Twitch accounts for more than watching and following streamers.

We'll see where we go with all of this.

In the meantime, I'm back to the grind. I'm excited to see what else I'll have to talk to you fine folks about next week!

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