Mechanics are the DNA of a role playing game. They determine its aptitudes and limitations. The perfect role playing game probably does not exist. Maybe it will once we’re in our second or third edition. At this point, 50 years into the lifespan of the ttrpg industry, its hard to find mechanics that are completely original mutations or innovations. Although, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Evolution is more about refinement than it is about sudden, shocking changes.
Q.U.E.S.T.E. was intended to be mostly familiar with its core mechanics with an innovative feel to their implementation and integration. Long time gamers will likely recognize the pedigree of Q.U.E.S.T.E.’s mechanics fairly quickly. The real stress test falls on their integration with one another, hence the playtest version currently available. In order to make the integration a little more efficient at the table, this blog post will identify the underlying concepts of the core mechanics.
Dice
In order to maintain a lower learning curve, 2d6 was selected as the core mechanic very early in development. This is the most familiar core mechanic in table top gaming, rolling two six sided dice. Monopoly, Sorry, craps, Catan, and myriad other games roll six sided dice and add them together. Most people have two six sided dice somewhere in a junk drawer. There are two key benefits to this core mechanic beyond simply lowering the barriers to entry. The first is that some people just like rolling dice. The second is the inherent bell curve, which mitigates the random probabilities for people that don’t like chance based mechanics. The bell curve also is something other mechanics can branch off of. In an effort to take full advantage of this mechanic, virtually every rule in the game uses the same resolution mechanic: 2d6 + a base statistic + a skill modifier – a difficulty = a result that can translated into one of several outcomes.
Branching off of this mechanic are the resolutions themselves. In order to add narrative interest, there are 5 categories of resolution in most instances: critical failure, failure, mixed success, success, and critical success. Here is where we encounter our first round of cognitive dissonance between the two selling points that ttrpgs inevitably seek to achieve: realism and simplicity. The more realistic a resolution mechanic seeks to be, the more complicated it becomes. Some ttrpgs commit wholeheartedly to one side of this spectrum, but most try to walk a line between them. A great example of this is the “failing forward” mechanic. It’s a fantastic narrative mechanic, truly revolutionary. It’s a simple concept that keeps the story moving forward with minimal need to consult a rulebook. However, it is not very realistic in a general sense because in the real world things just don’t work out sometimes, and the only real consequence is lost time. The 5 outcome categories here seek to achieve something similar by giving a realistic range of possibilities while still keeping narrative control in the hands of the players by leaving each category open ended.
Lastly, the optional advantage/disadvantage rule gives the Narrator a lot of mathematical control over the mechanics while providing the players with a tactile, visual cue that easily communicates its significance. Simply adding and subtracting dice to represent advantage and disadvantage allows us to view every value in the game as a usable variable.
Character Creation
As already stated above, we want to walk that line between realism and simplicity. Additionally, we want to provide opportunities for every player to influence the narrative and express creativity. Towards those ends, another commitment made early on in development was to not have a class system. Class systems are a double edged sword. So class-less systems are like double-headed hammers. In a class system, the players’ focus is directed through a funnel to make games less daunting and more thematic. However, they limit the players to whatever they find inside the funnel and how well they familiarize themselves with those things.
Using an attribute system allows players to stretch their creative wings a little farther. It allows them to effectively construct a whole new class every time they play. However, it places more responsibility on the players to color inside the thematic lines of the story and it can be more daunting in terms of analysis paralysis. Well, these are the prices we pay. A clever player can start with a very powerful character, so long as they also start with flaws that the Narrator can exploit. A creative player can build a character that has a lot of depth and originality, but might not be particularly “strong.”
While this system gives the players a lot of opportunities to directly influence the story, it is a vehicle limited by its operator. Instead of holding a player’s hand like a class system or a skill tree, it invites players to accept more creative responsibility and requires solid communication between the player characters and the Narrator. Honestly, not everyone is going to enjoy this system. It works best when approached with a trial-and-error mentality, which is why we recommend keeping thing simple with some one-shots if you’re not already familiar with the system. Additionally, we recommend to players to that they narrow their own focus when building a character. Stick with the things that sound interesting, and don’t bother memorizing attributes you don’t plan to use.
Combat
Welcome to crunch town. Population: whatever you want it to be.
In an effort to satisfy a large audience, and walk the line between realism and simplicity, the version of the game that is currently being playtested utilizes modular rules. This is a recent addition to the rulebook, so it is also the thing we’re hoping to get the most feedback on. Combat is were most rules become relevant in most roleplaying games. As the rulebook says, it’s the meat and potatoes. Effectively, we wanted the complexity of combat to be a dial that can get turned up and turned down depending on the style of game you’re trying to play. We managed to keep the rules chapter around 30 pages long, and we’re pretty proud of that. So we’re not going to go super in-depth here. I just want to highlight first how combat utilizes the core mechanic, and then highlight a few of the optional rules.
Actions in combat are all standard or minor. Standard actions cost more and typically require a die roll… that’s pretty much it. The initiative system uses a slightly modified version of the core mechanic and awards a number of actions to players. They can spend those actions to do stuff. A list of actions is provided, and the Narrator decides what action from that list encapsulates the thing a player is trying to do. Some of them are very specific, like mount or dismount an animal. Some are pretty broad, like “Make a skill roll,” which is literally just the core 2d6 mechanic. We tried to lean towards the philosophy of “Don’t overthink it” with the action economy and categories. In some role playing games, only certain classes can disarm, or trip, or shove. In this game, anyone can try those things. Just pick the action it falls under, and activate the core mechanic. Oh, and roll high enough.
With the optional rules, we leaned towards overthinking all of it. But their optional, so… yeah.
Wounds are the crown jewel of the optional rules. You can just treat damage as a static number. Or you can include damage types for resistances and vulnerabilities. OR you can also list each individual instance of damage, labeled with its type, and heal them individually. OR you can additionally apply rules for how to heal different types of wounds. OR you can additionally use the critical attack tables to assign devastating wounds that may or may not be permanent and may or may not include steeper requirements for healing. Also, you can optionally allow damage to affect base statistics to represent pain, emotional distress, fatigue, etc.
Another optional rule, that’s probably my favorite, is the optional rule for targeting large creatures. This rule basically makes a barbarian hitting a giant with a great-axe much more realistic and provides some interesting opportunities for tactical decision making. Basically, if a creature’s body extends outside a weapon’s range, the wielder has to chose what body part in range they are attacking with different limitations and consequences applied to different body parts. These rules can also be used for “shot-calling” with creatures that are the same size, if that’s something you’re interested in. These rules pair nicely with the grappling and shoving rules, also optional.
Lastly, we’re going to talk about the optional initiative rules. The Narrator can choose between three rulesets: fixed initiative, simple initiative, and cinematic initiative. Fixed initiative is fixed. Turn order is decided at the beginning of each session. Simple initiative is the traditional D&D style. Cinematic initiative is the realistic rule set. A constant thorn in the side of roleplaying games is “opportunity attacks.” Without going into it too much, it is very difficult to create a realistic mechanic for these kinds of reactive events without making things awkward or complex. The main reason why is because real violence, real life-and-death situations, induce tunnel vision in most animals, including humans. However, the tunnel vision is not impenetrable and luck can sometimes win out over reaction times. Our proposed solution is simply allowing they players to “budget” their character’s attention span by spending or saving a limited number of points and using those points to outbid their enemies. The math can seem finnicky compared to the comfort of a simple initiative, but those finnicky moments are decision making opportunities when players to flex their tactical prowess… optionally.
At the end of the day, this is all still in its testing phase. Any and all of this may or may not exist in the final printed version of the game. Explore these mechanics and see what you like at your table, then pretty pretty please come back and tell us how it went. Every bit of feedback we get gives us a +1 bonus for writing the perfect roleplaying game… you know, if we feel like it.
Henry Standage
