Just last night I was able to complete a playtest of the current Pressure System resolution mechanic. For those new to newsletter I’ll quickly summarize what that mechanic looks like.
New Pressure Resolution(s)
A Player is either going to make a Check or they are going to apply Effort to a task. Checks are for situations that are yes/no questions. "Do I know what this ritual does?", "Can I reach the ledge?" Effort is for when you are trying to accomplish something over time. Picking a lock, fighting a monster, convincing someone to do something. This is a similar approach to the ICRPG system.
Each player has a Pressure Die associated with them. This symbolizes the severity of their current situation. So how do they interact with this Pressure Die with Checks and Effort?
Check = roll the Pressure Die and try to have its result be equal to or less than a specific attribute score (range of 2-5)
Effort = roll a Skill Die and the Pressure Die together. If Skill is higher or equal to Pressure then add there values for your effort. If Skill is less than Pressure your effort equals the skill die result.
Old Pressure Resolution
A Player again is going to have situations where they are rolling for a Check or for Effort. They also have a Pressure Die associated with the zone they are in. It is not associated with them individually. Each zone in an encounter would potentially have a different die representing its current Pressure. The player also has a Skill or Attribute Die that they are going to use. How did this process differ?
Check = roll your Skill Die and Pressure Die together. If your Skill Die is equal to or greater than the Pressure Die then you have succeeded.
Effort = roll your Skill Die and the Pressure Die together. If your Skill Die is greater than the Pressure Die you determine the difference between them. That number is your Effort. (skill = 8, pressure = 3, you did 5 effort)
Comparing after Playtests
Recently I had the opportunity to playtest the New Pressure mechanic. It was nice to stop theorizing it and see how players reacted to it. Like the Old Pressure mechanic, there were things people liked about it, and things that they didn't gel with. So I've now been thinking about the feedback from both old and new mechanics, and trying to figure out what the happy middle ground is.
Pressure Intent
The whole purpose of the Pressure Die is to invoke some feeling of slight anxiety or dread when rolling it. Maybe dread is a poor choice, but the gambling feeling of rolling the die and hoping your die comes out on top. The older system did this very well. Playtesters really enjoyed when they beat the Pressure Die, but when they didn't beat it there was a null result. The consolation prize they were awarded for this null result was a metacurrency that the team could tap into on later turns.
The zones were cumbersome. The Pressure Die for every zone was a bit much to manage at the table. However, the mini-game that players loved was the switching and manipulating of the Pressure Dice from zone to zone. This was almost always expressed as the highlight, and it felt like “true teamwork” for them.
The New Pressure mechanic tried to solve for a couple things. It tried to eliminate the null result, and did so effectively. You always do some amount of effort with your rolls. It also tried to eliminate the fiddliness of zones by assigning a Pressure Die to each individual player instead of the zones. However, the actual mechanic when you rolled the Pressure Die created a disconnect for players. In this version you wanted the Pressure Die result to be high, but not higher than your Skill result. Which creates a weird feeling. In the Old Pressure mechanic you wanted the Pressure Die to roll as low as possible. That would mean your effort was higher, and it felt right.
Players also didn't connect with the two different resolution mechanics for the New Pressure. Players weren't happy with rolling under for Checks and rolling over and big for Effort. Other games like Viking Death Squad have been successful with multiple resolution mechanics, but this may have been a failed attempt.
Skills & Attributes
Its also important to note how much Attributes have changed over time, and how that might be effecting game play/design. In the Old Pressure system we used roles in combat as your actual attributes; Leader, Striker, Defender, Shooter, Controller, etc.
This became a large issue when the game mechanics were streamlined for 1st level and the GM was trying to call for simple actions. There was a universal skill die referred to as the Adventuring Die that was handling off-case situations. The alternative was to create a large list of skills and have each skill assigned a die. However, I as a designer felt this was clunky, hence the New Pressure design. In this most recent version there was an attribute mechanic with each attribute being assigned a number between 2-5. These were then used for making Checks.
Future of Pressure
More playtesting! I think that it's time to blend these two scenarios.
Old Pressure Resolution with Skills (no attributes)
I'm going to let the players decide what they like. We are going to go back to the Old Pressure system mechanic with a skill list associated with dice steps. I know I was hesitant to this as a designer, but if the players are fine with it then I am good with it also.
The skills I previously loved are the following: Create, Express, Force, Handle, Heal, Influence, Know, Move, Perceive, Survive.
I like these as skills because these are the verbs that I want to say as a GM when asking for a check. There would have to be some sub-categorization for things like Know, and some further explanation for words like Force.
For weapons I'm considering doing something like Dragonbane and Vagabond: Axes, Blades, Crude, Finesse, Fist, Hammers, Ranged, Shields.
The other option for weapons would be to use words more similar to properties: Finesse, Ranged, Reach, Heavy, etc.
Pressure for People not Zones
We will keep the mechanic from New Pressure system that assigns pressure to individual players. However, we will not associate this with their actual health. We will instead go back to the idea of using standard hit points.
By decoupling the Pressure Die from the player's health it gives the GM the flexibility to ramp up the Pressure when they feel its appropriate. This also gives the players more flexibility in altering and changing each other's Pressure, which has been reported as the most fun and interesting part.
Defense against Pressure
Bringing back the idea of rolling your Defense or Armor die against the Pressure and taking the difference in damage. This will allow us to use the Evade and the Brace mechanics, and have some basic damage resist potentially as well. These were explained under the Tactics section of the Modules newsletter.
Effort Calculations
There was an Effort calculation in the New Pressure system that felt good to me. It was nice as a GM to ask "how many rounds do I want this to last, and how hard should it be?" and just quickly calculate it. I've already started the process of what that might look like for the Old Pressure system mathematically.
The above chart has what would be considered the average effort in the center column. The column to the left and right are 1 standard deviation up or down from that average. Those numbers are then spread out over consecutive rounds. The top 5 rows are set against Pressure Die = 4, with the player's skill die making up the contested results on each row. Here is the calculation used, anydice.
this anydice looks at a particular stat vs lots of different pressure die values
Unfortunately the Old Pressure doesn't have a nice bell curve like the New Pressure had for calculating effort.
will add in a new calculation for an equation once I have established it.
Null States
This is where we have a slight issue. The Old Pressure system still has the null state where you might just miss an attack. Below is the percent chance you will succeed against the Pressure Die, regardless of how much Effort you are applying (you might only apply 1 Effort in some cases).
I think the way to solve for this can come from the previous newsletter where we talked about Agency. I like the idea of adding in a Hero Dice mechanic that is a bonus amount of Effort applied regardless of success or failure. Or the idea of placing Narrative Tags on things that represent how much additional effort is going to be applied. Enemy is Hobbled-2 means you get +2 to your total Effort when you attack them.
Death Numbers stay
The idea of having a specific threshold of Effort that each monster or trap has for a single action success is still satisfying. This means that a Monster might take 50 effort to defeat, but if a player can do 16 effort in a single strike it kills them immediately.
Could use this same principle with disarming a trap, or convincing a king. It leads players to try and potentially solve for large spikes on occasion.
Using New Pressure Mechanic for Magic
Its been challenging from the beginning trying to figure out how to make Magic in this system standout. Make it feel unique and interesting. I think that the New Pressure mechanic for Effort could be a good use case. It has a different feel, its more powerful, you want the Pressure Die to be a high result, but one that you beat. All of these things want me to test it out. It feels like thematically it might lend itself to the feeling of playing with dangerous forces.
Conclusion
I'll be doing another playtest hopefully in the coming days, and I'll report back on here as soon as I know how it goes. Stay Tuned!