Post Terminus, and Halcyon Days before it, has always been summed up as a Writing Roleplaying Game. In reality, it's more of a shared writing environment or just roleplaying. There's not a lot of 'game' in it because even though we have stats and rules, we lack in a legitimate challenge. There is almost no means to fail, unless you want to fail. With my recent push to try to downplay the 'rules' side of things, there will be even less feeling of threat or accomplishment. This thread is meant to be a discussion. I want to hear your thoughts on this, whether you like or hate it, what you'd like to see from it, and so forth.
I believe many of you have played D&D at least a little, and may be familiar with the basic premise of ability checks. What I have in mind is for most of the upcoming PM threads to have a Success Check. Threads will have an open, hidden, or random difficulty threshold, and you'll have different things you can do to increase your chances for success. Simple example of a possible 'open' mission prompt:
In the example, a writer who hits at least 3k words, and uses a variety of techs (up to Skilled, with feats) would be starting with 55 points. Finishing the thread should bring them up to 75, enough to be considered resolved. But if they wrote it in particularly interesting ways (finding a non-violent solution, fleshing out the baddies, bringing personal plot into the mix), they could rate a great success, which would open up the possibilities for extra rewards of some kind. Conversely, letting the thread drag too long or noselling every conflict could cost points, causing failure (cutting the writers out of possible rewards, and with plot consequences) or a critical failure (the above plus potentially lasting repercussions for the characters).
I mentioned having open, closed, and random types of these -- in addition to normal chapters and collabs, of course. The 'closed' type would have an unknown difficulty goal, and the 'random' type would have the writer leave off on a cliffhanger, using a Roll function to determine what the difficulty was and whether the player hit goal.
What do you all think? Does this sound interesting? Have any suggestions for changes or improvements, or just think the idea should be scrapped?
I believe many of you have played D&D at least a little, and may be familiar with the basic premise of ability checks. What I have in mind is for most of the upcoming PM threads to have a Success Check. Threads will have an open, hidden, or random difficulty threshold, and you'll have different things you can do to increase your chances for success. Simple example of a possible 'open' mission prompt:
Example said:
In the example, a writer who hits at least 3k words, and uses a variety of techs (up to Skilled, with feats) would be starting with 55 points. Finishing the thread should bring them up to 75, enough to be considered resolved. But if they wrote it in particularly interesting ways (finding a non-violent solution, fleshing out the baddies, bringing personal plot into the mix), they could rate a great success, which would open up the possibilities for extra rewards of some kind. Conversely, letting the thread drag too long or noselling every conflict could cost points, causing failure (cutting the writers out of possible rewards, and with plot consequences) or a critical failure (the above plus potentially lasting repercussions for the characters).
I mentioned having open, closed, and random types of these -- in addition to normal chapters and collabs, of course. The 'closed' type would have an unknown difficulty goal, and the 'random' type would have the writer leave off on a cliffhanger, using a Roll function to determine what the difficulty was and whether the player hit goal.
What do you all think? Does this sound interesting? Have any suggestions for changes or improvements, or just think the idea should be scrapped?
