Three Bowls (Input and criticism would be appreciated)

[Lady Tialait]

A while ago I had a weird idea for a system when doing dishes. I was going to flesh it out personally, but the task became really daunting when looking at it and it's been difficult to flesh out anything. So, I'm coming here to see if I just have a bad idea, or if there is something to it. If there is something to it, I would like some help fleshing it out and refining it into something fun.

The idea behind it is to make as little number memorizing and character sheet referring as possible. Your character sheet is a list of abilities and three small cups or bowls or circles on a piece of paper with dice placed in them. There are no penalties or bonuses like in many TTRPG systems instead dice move between the three bowls very quickly representing the actions of both yourself and those around you.

The size of the dice is undecided but I have a ton of D10s so I have been working with those as I have access, it could easily be any size dice that a fair amount of can be acquired.

The three bowls are Power, Grace, and Vitality.

Power represents the raw power of the character and is used in anything that can potentially kill their foe.

Grace represents the speed and dexterity of a character, and is used for anything regarding movement or fine manipulation.

Vitality represents the health, stamina and willpower of a character, and is used to resist being killed or any other thing related to fatigue.

Your dice are not something you ever lose, you simple move them from bowl to bowl due to actions you take or actions done upon you. Every action should move dice from one bowl to another, when a die is moved from one bowl it goes to the next one in a circle. If you spend power, it goes to Vitality. Vitality to Grace, and Grace to Power.

Example: If you were to attack you spend a power dice, removing it and putting it in Vitality. Then you would roll your dice in your power bowl, the target would choose if they wanted to dodge or simply take the hit. If they doge, they move one of their grace dice putting it into their power bowl and roll what is in the bowl. Compare dice, higher dice removing lower ones, and tied dice are also removed. If the target of the attack still has oncoming power dice, he must move one vitality to grace and roll his vitality bowl. Again removing dice from the attack as with the previous roll. At this point if he still has incoming power dice he moves vitality dice equal to the number of power dice incoming. If you move your last Vitality dice from your vitality bowl and have a power die coming in, you are rendered helpless and may be killed with one additional attack upon you.

That is the simple starting point. I would love some input, and perhaps a list of actions that make sense. I also have no idea how advancement would work.

[Jormengand]

A while ago I had a weird idea for a system when doing dishes. I was going to flesh it out personally, but the task became really daunting when looking at it and it's been difficult to flesh out anything. So, I'm coming here to see if I just have a bad idea, or if there is something to it. If there is something to it, I would like some help fleshing it out and refining it into something fun.

The idea behind it is to make as little number memorizing and character sheet referring as possible. Your character sheet is a list of abilities and three small cups or bowls or circles on a piece of paper with dice placed in them. There are no penalties or bonuses like in many TTRPG systems instead dice move between the three bowls very quickly representing the actions of both yourself and those around you.

The size of the dice is undecided but I have a ton of D10s so I have been working with those as I have access, it could easily be any size dice that a fair amount of can be acquired.

I would strongly recommend d6s if there are going to be more than a few floating about - I have at home about 50d6 and 2d10, for example. d10s or d20s are probably your next best bet, but neither is exactly a close second.


The three bowls are Power, Grace, and Vitality.

Power represents the raw power of the character and is used in anything that can potentially kill their foe.

Grace represents the speed and dexterity of a character, and is used for anything regarding movement or fine manipulation.

Vitality represents the health, stamina and willpower of a character, and is used to resist being killed or any other thing related to fatigue.

Strength, Dexterity and Constitution? :smallamused:

More seriously, you should consider that not all abilities will fall under one of those categories - even D&D had to hamfist agility into dexterity and awareness and will into the same ability, wisdom. I usually use Power/Agility/Dexterity/Vigour/Awareness/Intellect/Personality/Will. You should probably have at least some mental bowls - maybe have them do the die-moves-to-next-bowl separately from physical, or maybe not.


Your dice are not something you ever lose, you simple move them from bowl to bowl due to actions you take or actions done upon you. Every action should move dice from one bowl to another, when a die is moved from one bowl it goes to the next one in a circle. If you spend power, it goes to Vitality. Vitality to Grace, and Grace to Power.

The problem I see with this is that it doesn't really make sense - and by make sense, I don't mean that it's necessarily mechanically flawed, but that what it represents seems absurd. For example, if you want to hit someone with a sword, you're better off repeatedly dodging someone, anyone, before you do that. And once you hit someone with that sword, you become better able to take hits, because...?


Example: If you were to attack you spend a power dice, removing it and putting it in Vitality. Then you would roll your dice in your power bowl, the target would choose if they wanted to dodge or simply take the hit. If they doge, they move one of their grace dice putting it into their power bowl and roll what is in the bowl. Compare dice, higher dice removing lower ones, and tied dice are also removed. If the target of the attack still has oncoming power dice, he must move one vitality to grace and roll his vitality bowl. Again removing dice from the attack as with the previous roll. At this point if he still has incoming power dice he moves vitality dice equal to the number of power dice incoming. If you move your last Vitality dice from your vitality bowl and have a power die coming in, you are rendered helpless and may be killed with one additional attack upon you.

That is the simple starting point. I would love some input, and perhaps a list of actions that make sense. I also have no idea how advancement would work.

This can be exceptionally weird. For a start, it means that if you get beaten up a great deal, you suddenly become amazing at dodging and shooting people. As noted above, this makes zero sense, fundamentally. Second, it means that rather than running away, the best cure for death is to punch someone in the face. Oh, and there's an unreasonably high chance that two high-level characters will never kill each other as all their dice go round and round in circles (or that two low-level characters will never kill each other as all their dice get stuck in vitality, and neither of them can make attacks and thereby move the other's dice back out of vitality).

I do think you need to get past the hangup about ever losing dice, even temporarily. If you get beaten up, your capabilities don't shift to being more agile: they just go. Hells, you can even let people choose where they lose dice from, or if you are using a d6 (and if you have 6 or 3 bowls) make it random (if you have 5 or 4 bowls, you can have double or triple chance to lose it from vitality). As-is, you can't really get beaten up for longer than it takes for you to dodge and punch a bit.

Oh, and you have a slightly weird opposite bounded accuracy thing going on - if I understand you correctly, someone with more attack dice than the enemy has defence dice can never miss (if they roll 1111 to the enemy's 666 then each 6 will remove a 1, and the fourth 1 will go through).

This concept can be done, but fundamentally it has to represent something other than physical combat. It might make an interesting magic system, for example, where expending the power of earth causes air to be more dominant, while expending the power of air causes fire to be more dominant, and so forth fire-water and water-earth. Maybe the bowls are shared between everyone, and it's randomly determined where each die goes, so an earth mage fighting a fire mage can either spam fire spells in an attempt to deplete the fire bowl, water spells in an attempt to fill up the earth bowl, or earth spells because his earth spells are better than his fire or water spells.

Just for fun, you can have a five-element sequence where each casting takes two dice out of the bowl, and puts one in the next element and one in the one after. So, casting an earth spell might fill up the air and aether bowls, but casting an air spell fills up the aether and fire bowls and an aether spell fills up the fire and water bowls. This does, however, mean that every element is strong against two elements and weak against two others, rather than strong against one, weak against one, and neutral against one. That said, it's not as bad a weakness (you only have to cast one spell to get a die that's just left your enemy's bowl into yours, rather than two).

tl;dr I think this would make a great magic system but it doesn't make a lot of sense used as a primary system for your game.

[Grod_The_Giant]

tl;dr I think this would make a great magic system but it doesn't make a lot of sense used as a primary system for your game.
I kind of agree with this. It's an interesting mechanic, but it kind of feels more like a board game one than an RPG one, if that makes sense.

At the very least, I think there needs to be some revision to the flow of dice, so that it's less of a circular thing. That's the main issue, I think, this weird flow of competence-- "jump, tumble, run" works well, but "run, tumble, jump" leaves you struggling. Like, maybe when you take damage dice are moved from your Vitality bowl to an "Adrenaline" bowl, where they can either be expended to improve Power or Grace rolls or (partially) returned to Vitality at the end of the encounter-- that would be a neat cinematic system.

[Zale]

The way the mechanics are shaped puts me in the mind of some sort of Wuxia centered system- in which the various pools represent different types of Ki, or the like. I could easily see a system based on the Wu Xing cycle of elements, with expenditure from one feeding another and creating imbalances within a person.

If you went with something like that, then you could provide bonuses or penalties based on how high or low each of someone's pools are- which offers some interesting mechanical hooks to hang abilities off of.

I don't see anything particularly wrong with the base mechanics- they seem really interesting, and feel quite novel. (I can't think off the top of my head of a system that uses a similar way of shifting dice from one pool to the next.)

I would agree, however, that you might want to find a lore background or basis that better reflects what the mechanics are.

[Lady Tialait]

Alright, time to explain myself.

Firstly, I was thinking an Arabic setting, like Sharazad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheherazade) style world.

Second, the idea that 'high level' I'm not sure what you expect advancement to be, but I do NOT want it to be you get more dice for your bowls. Perhaps character grow wider, with more options.

The cycle not making sense issue, I think it makes plenty of sense in most situations. The more bowls you set out with more pools of dice the more dice needed to create a situation where you don't feel like you are too thin. It's not really a fix to anything, it's simply creating complexity for mostly no reason.

As for why you would become harder to harm when you attack, it's because HP even in DnD is an abstract of several things, heartiness, will to fight, divine protection, luck. All those things and more, anything that would have you survive a blow from a blade to your vital areas. The Vitality dice pool would serve much the same purpose. As such, I expect there could be ways of using it to do things in game. Doing an attack would make you feel a surge in combat, you can strike at them even if they dodge it you have greater will to fight, perhaps the Gods favor you more, perhaps you feel no pain as you feel your own power moving on them.

The size of dice I don't really think is relevant, I have tons of D10s, you may have tons of d6s the next person may have tons of d12s If I used it forum play...everyone has unlimited all. the system pretty much works the same in all of those, unless someone can show me a mathematical reason one is superior to another.

Also, the issues brought up now make sense but only if you assume you get more and more dice in your bowls, and only if you have a large amount of dice. Imagine if you have three bowls and five dice. That means you want to have one die in each pool, and the other two flowing around the circle. If I have 2 in Vitality, 2 in Grace, and 1 in power, I could attack, meaning I'd have to somehow move from Grace to power to attack again, giving me all 5 dice to save me from attacks. If someone has gotten everything into power, they still don't have a full advantage against me. As everyone would have 5 dice.

On the subject of mental statistics, I always found them distasteful. Players will bring intelligence to their characters, within their limits. Social rolls are the gamiest thing in RPG systems, and often create really bad situations, I really dislike them.

[erradin]

Alright, time to explain myself.

Firstly, I was thinking an Arabic setting, like Sharazad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheherazade) style world.

Second, the idea that 'high level' I'm not sure what you expect advancement to be, but I do NOT want it to be you get more dice for your bowls. Perhaps character grow wider, with more options.

The cycle not making sense issue, I think it makes plenty of sense in most situations. The more bowls you set out with more pools of dice the more dice needed to create a situation where you don't feel like you are too thin. It's not really a fix to anything, it's simply creating complexity for mostly no reason.

As for why you would become harder to harm when you attack, it's because HP even in DnD is an abstract of several things, heartiness, will to fight, divine protection, luck. All those things and more, anything that would have you survive a blow from a blade to your vital areas. The Vitality dice pool would serve much the same purpose. As such, I expect there could be ways of using it to do things in game. Doing an attack would make you feel a surge in combat, you can strike at them even if they dodge it you have greater will to fight, perhaps the Gods favor you more, perhaps you feel no pain as you feel your own power moving on them.

The size of dice I don't really think is relevant, I have tons of D10s, you may have tons of d6s the next person may have tons of d12s If I used it forum play...everyone has unlimited all. the system pretty much works the same in all of those, unless someone can show me a mathematical reason one is superior to another.

Also, the issues brought up now make sense but only if you assume you get more and more dice in your bowls, and only if you have a large amount of dice. Imagine if you have three bowls and five dice. That means you want to have one die in each pool, and the other two flowing around the circle. If I have 2 in Vitality, 2 in Grace, and 1 in power, I could attack, meaning I'd have to somehow move from Grace to power to attack again, giving me all 5 dice to save me from attacks. If someone has gotten everything into power, they still don't have a full advantage against me. As everyone would have 5 dice.

On the subject of mental statistics, I always found them distasteful. Players will bring intelligence to their characters, within their limits. Social rolls are the gamiest thing in RPG systems, and often create really bad situations, I really dislike them.

Accepting what you just said, I do have to offer some comments, if that’s alright with you. First, I want to compliment you on the elegance of the system. If you could get it to work, I would be very interested in seeing how it plays.



I want to offer some suggestion/commentary. Please feel free to ignore or modify these at your whim, naturally.



Now, I hear what you are saying. You can explain how an attack/using ‘power’ might improve your grace or vitality (allows you to change your balance or gives you a momentary adrenalin boost or something). I can also see how acting through grace might improve your power or vitality (you position yourself for the perfect hit or move with a blow to lessen its effect, or some such). That said, I’m not clear on how vitality maps onto power or grace in terms of moving dice. I practice historical European swordsmanship with both German longsword and British military saber and let me tell you: getting hit or barely snatching yourself away from a blow does not in any way improve your power and grace. You might guard yourself against an attack by shifting your sword into position (grace?) or cut through an oncoming attack to hit your opponent (power?) but WEATHERING an attack? If anything, both your grace and power decrease. Heck, fighting for several minutes straight produces a considerable passive drain on both power and grace. As your muscles tire your attacks become less forceful and less precise. Your guards become less about perfect positioning and more about knocking the sword out of your face.



Respectfully, I think that, as much as this wasn’t a feature of your original idea, infinite circuity isn’t going to serve as a great system. I think you may want to consider instead a system where you start with all of your dice in your vitality bowl and, at the start of your turn, you apportion them out between grace and power, depending on what you want to commit to this turn. When your turn comes around again (or the non-combat encounter is over, etc.) you portion your dice out again. I can even see limits to how many dice can be in a bowl by class. A rogue, for example, might have 8 total dice and be able to have a maximum of 6 in grace and a max of 3 in power. This makes moving dice a game of resource management. As you said- when you have no dice left in your vitality bowl, you are severely injured or killed by the next attack- so how vulnerable does a character want to make themselves in order to perform a given activity? But what should happen to dice that are taken from you in injury? I think this is the part where the cycle must break. Dice lost from Vitality to injury should be moved to a separate area- the Bowl of Rest, perhaps. They can be retrieved by resting, being magically healed, or by some class abilities (Adrenaline rush perk?—once per encounter you can return some number of dice from the Bowl of Rest? Something like that?)



This also opens up the opportunity for certain class abilities to let you move dice mid-turn or in response to an opponent’s actions. This opens up the opportunity for ‘level advancement’ to increase the maximum number of dice you can put in a bowl. Perhaps advanced moves even require you to commit a minimum number. Advanced moves may allow you to move dice for your opponents or allies. All sorts of things.