Roll to Alter was a great game. Its too bad it died, and its time I remedied the situation. For anyone who has not seen the original, here is the
Ryan Fitzharris is a steam worker. He is a normal engineer who dapples in inventing. He is currently employed as steam tunnel maintenance.
This is a team-based game. The players are the forces of chaos, chance, and probability, divided into two teams of three. One is Team Success, and their task is to improve the lot in life of the round's protagonist however possible; the other is Team Failure, and their objective is to absolutely ruin the protagonist, whether that means destroying his country, ruining her marriage, killing him off, etc.
As for rules, they are few and simple...
First, this game uses only two dice: a d100 to roll for initiative on each turn, and a d6 for determining the success of each action. Most actions are Medium difficulty, so players have to get 3 or above to succeed. Depending on sequences of events, difficulty for rolls may be easier or harder. For example, in Turn 1 the protagonist is getting ready for work, but he's still eating breakfast. A member of Team Failure causes a thirty-car pileup on the main road into town. In Turn 2 a member of Team Success tries to get him to work on time, but it'll be harder since last round Team Failure blocked the road. This is a simple example, but enough for the general idea.
Second, there are four kinds of actions a player can take. The first is a standard action; the player types, for example, "Pepsi re-releases Crystal Pepsi." (If our protagonist happens to be the Cinema Snob then obviously this is a Team Success action. :3) The second is a Counter, which is the equivalent of 'no u!'To keep this example up, Team Failure might respond to that with "(Counter TS 1) But it turns out that one of the ingredients in Crystal Pepsi causes illness in the majority of the population." Note that counters will automatically fail if the action being countered fails. Counters can be countered as well, and each counter increases the difficulty by one. So if the first action is a difficulty of 3, then the counter is 4, the counter's counter is 5, and the counter's counter's counter is 6. Counters can only ever be three deep for this reason. >.> Third is the Support action. Another member of Team Success might say, "(Support TS 1) Pepsi researches the ingredients thoroughly, making the drink even better than before." In this case, both TS 1 and TS 2 roll against the difficulty, we'll say 3. TS 1 fails but TS 2 succeeds, so TF 1 can now counter that. Fourth is the Sleeper action. To change examples, we might have a TF member post "(Sleeper) Johnny fails his math test. His parents are going to be so pissed when they find out!" Sleeper actions are ALWAYS rolled against 4 and each round they 'sleep,' including the first round, they accumulate a point. At any time, Team Success or Team Failure can try to activate the sleeper. If the team that initiated the Sleeper activates it, they get all the points - both the initial four and the ones it has accumulated. If the opposing team springs the Sleeper, then they get the points accumulated, but not the initial four. Finally, the team that created the sleeper can use an action to keep it from being used; successfully doing so will add the points from the 'save' to the initial total.
Third, there is a point system, as noted above. Games run for a whole year, with two turns a month for a total of 25 turns (the first half of January is both the first and last turn). Each action gains points equivalent to its difficulty. Let's say, for example, Team Success has one standard action, one counter, and activates a Sleeper Team Failure has been keeping. Team Failure has three counters; one for the standard action, one for the counter's counter, and one to keep the Sleeper under wraps. The rolls go 5, 4, 5, 2; therefore Team Success gets 5 points. (Initial difficulty was 3 and the roll passed; Team Failure's difficulty was 4 and passed; Team Success's counter to their counter was 5 and passed; Team Failure's final counter was against 6 and failed.) On the other action, Team Success rolls 3, and Team Failure rolls 6. The Sleeper is still waiting to be activated, but now it's worth 8+(# of turns sleeping) as opposed to 4.
Fourth: About ending the game. The game ends on one of five conditions: one team's point total exceeds 120, Team Success meets a certain goal, Team Failure meets a certain goal, one team's point total exceeds the other by 50 points, or time runs out. In the final case, the team with the most point wins. :3
Fifth, certain actions are 'off-limits,' some for the early portion of the round, others entirely. For example, Team Failure can't make the protagonist directly kill himself. It's just not cool. However, if for example our protagonist happens to be a knight, they could spend time building up a fearsome dragon, then have the king give the knight an order to go fight it. He might live. It's more likely he'll die, but it's still fair and legal. On the other hand, Team Success can't do similar things. In the first round, Bruce Halford's goal was to succeed JK Woodward as CEO of GenCorp. Team Success wasn't allowed to just kill off JK, but they were allowed to have his health steadily decline until he was forced to retire. Other 'illegal' actions are doing things that are impossible in the scope of the current setting; if the protagonist is, say, in the Fallout universe, one can hardly expect her to teleport from place to place or go to another planet.
Sixth, be creative! Remember you don't have to directly target the protagonist to achieve your results. Team Failure, for example, could have a fellow dwarf accidentally pull THE lever and ruin his life that way; Team Success could try to take advantage of Team Failure having a bad channel dug to create a mist generator. Team Failure could cause an oil spill to ruin a protagonist's beach date; Team Success could have him volunteer to clean it up to look good in front of his girlfriend. There's no way for the players to die, so feel free to try whatever you want; you are a force of chaos, and other than acheiving your goal, what do the consequences matter? :3
Seven, or, the anti-dermishness rule. No actions with a chance of happening of less that 1 in a billion. There are a few exceptions to this rule, like winning the lottery. But no "Black hole comes through and owns the galaxy"
ROUND 1: BRUCE HALFORD, CAPITALIST (World 1: Arch-Conservative USA / LCS)
Bruce succeeded JK Woodward as the CEO of GenCorp, a company that made vehicle parts and perpetual motion coffee machines. A Team Success Victory!
Team Success
choobakka
Krath
Dwarmin
Team Failure
Taricus
Talarion
wolfchild
ROUND 2: KEL RAKUSTLOTOL, AXEDWARF (World 2: Dwarf Fortress)
Kel was forced to abandon his fortress, the only survivor of a joint attack between trolls, goblins, elves, demons, and a giant cave spider. The real death of the fortress, though, was the catsplosion. A Team Failure Victory!
Team Success
Draignean
Powder Miner
wolfchild
Team Failure
Grimmjow6th
choobakka
Taricus
ROUND 3: DR. MARMOT GALLOWS, SUPERVILLAIN (World 1: Arch-Conservative USA / LCS)
Mutated science experiments in the deep successfully summoned Azathoth... A Team Failure Victory!
Team Success
Talarion
Noah22223
breadbocks
Team Failure
Digital Hellhound
Theodolus
wolfchild
ROUND 4: AROGETH, DRAGON (World 2: Dwarf Fortress)
Eventually Arogeth was killed by a pair of demon-created dragons... a Team Failure victory!
Team Success
V-Norrec
Krath
Taricus
Team Failure
Powder Miner
Theodolus
Krath
Off we go.
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Topic: Roll to Alter Somones life Reloaded -- Round 2 - Turn 2 (Read 30125 times)