One of the greatest advantages of playing a video game over a tabletop game is that all of the complicated formulae are calculated instantly. I’ve known many gamers over the years, who are otherwise entirely intelligent individuals, that have had an almost unbreakable detestation of numbers. One of my colleagues has suggested that small number addition is as difficult to some as reading is as difficult to those with dyslexia, and I’ve seen enough hesitation and trouble with adding up the different dice and their modifiers amongst my tables for years to believe this is probably correct.
While numberless systems are typically elegant and provide for excellent storytelling, they tend to lack the amount of control that most of the players I’ve come across enjoy. There is that certain competitive edge that people seek, even during the character creation process, that numberless systems do nothing to little to promote. I am sure there are exceptions, but in my experience, that has almost entirely been the case.
Due to the design goal of regulating combat, a numbered system for OMEN was completely necessary, and as stated in an earlier article, I had settled for the OGL d20. It was most familiar to me throughout the years, and had a substantial customer base, so why not? Yet, as many of you know, the d20 system is rather like using twenty-five tools when two will do. I abandoned it shortly after beginning the design of OMEN.
I had tinkered in the past with percentile systems, and had played in several that used “roll-under,” but I thought it somewhat counter-intuitive, especially to newer players who couldn’t grasp the vagaries of probabilities and the like. I had GMd games more than one in which people asked, “But shouldn’t a higher roll be better?” Even the older editions of d20 had used a roll-under mechanic, but had moved on to “higher is better” thinking as the system evolved. I too determined that for OMEN, higher numbers should always be better.
One of my greatest issues with many systems is the dependence of many different dice. This I felt was one of the greatest impediments to including new players, and one of the things that many players got snagged up on during the calculation process. Certainly the dice added a sort of romantic, mysterious appeal in the early days, but the esoteric nature of such peculiar dice has become a running joke to those who are unfamiliar with RPGs. As OMEN is intended to garner as much of an audience, if not more, from brand new players, settling on a streamlined dice mechanic was deemed appropriate.
I had done quite a bit of research regarding the different probabilities of dice mechanics, as I dabbled in various MMORPGs and their tabletop counterparts. I thought for many years that the “cleanest” were percentile systems, the higher the percent the better your likelihood of success. The issue with this was the rather large numbers that came along with it; while adding twenty seven and thirteen is not entirely difficult, adding multiple rolls with bonuses and penalties culminating in a number in the hundreds is quite another matter.
I had even completed a percentile system for a science fiction game I intend to re-work in the future, but it was unnecessarily complicated and entirely the wrong direction for OMEN. So I settled on using a die that nearly every household possesses: the classic six sided die, or referred to as the d6 in the RPG industry. The d6 was ubiquitous, cheap; even free with many other games out there that were common to the house hold. The numbers were easy to read and add, and people were used to rolling and using them. Cubed dice also seem to have one of the better physical rolling mechanics, they clatter around clamorously and then settle quite nicely; it is almost impossible to have a d6 land crookedly.
Another benefit to the d6 is that the numbers remain low. I was a fan of “measured randomness,” and one of my favorite parts of the d20 system was using multiple d6 to generate character attributes. One of the benefits of this design mechanic is that the roll probabilities are bell-curved, meaning that rolling an average is much more likely than in a linear mechanic such as the d20. This would mimic reality somewhat better in my opinion: a degree of randomness that is definitely measurable, but the great majority of the time a character could behave rather consistently.
I settled on using three d6, hereby abbreviated as 3d6, to create this clean bell curve figure and keep the numbers manageable. Since I decided that I strictly wished to use d6s, attacks, damage, and defenses would all have to be approached differently than the standard. The majority of systems I have experience with use two distinctly different mechanics for resolving successes and determining the degree of that success.
For example, in the d20 system, a twenty-sided die (the d20) is rolled, modifiers are applied, and then that roll is compared against the target’s defense or difficulty. Once success is determined, the effect comes into play. This effect typically involves rolling multiple and different dice than the d20, adding them together with any additional modifiers, and applying it to the target. This could cause a couple of things to occur: primarily slowing down the game, but more significantly abstracting the success of that roll to a point that just didn’t make sense.
For example, with the d20 system as described above, a warrior could hit his enemy with a very high roll of the attack (using the d20) against his target’s defense, but then roll very low damage (with all of the other dice.) This essentially robbed the fun for the player who rolled the great hit, as the payoff wasn’t directly related to the success of the roll.
I wanted to get rid of this double mechanic, which worked in seamlessly with my goal of having conflict resolution be fast and using a single dice set. As opposed to rolling once (or multiple times) to determine success, and then rolling again to determine effect, I would combine the two into a single roll and compare that roll against the target. This could be used with static target numbers or rolls. The difference between the action and the target would determine the degree of success.
The system immediately clicked for me. It was fast and it made sense. The significance of the weapon in the d20 system, generating the larger die values, was paramount in determining combat effectiveness. If small dice were used, high modifiers had to be added, or large amounts of attacks had to be made in order to balance it out. This kind of system heavily favored huge powerful weapons. I didn’t want that in OMEN.
The people of OMEN typically used guns, or small and improvised melee weapons that wouldn’t slow them down. These kinds of weapons would still be deadly, as the difference of the weapons would not be as significant of a factor as the skill of the wielder. An extremely skilled combatant would consistently beat the average thug, even with a better weapon; but that threat would always exist. A lucky shot, in this case embodied by the roll of the dice, could land in that perfect spot and kill even the most skilled.
This went well with the realistic and somewhat gritty tone I was going for with OMEN; it played fast, it played smooth, and it made combats extremely fun and dangerous. This made tactics, cover, and strategic choices all the more important. The math was relatively simple, with numbers in the ten to forty range, and the math was fairly flat. The playtesters who had slogged through the convoluted mess that was the OMEN d20 system now had hours of fun in conjunction with combat, role-play, and all manners of obstacles requiring rolls. The system began to evolve and become refined, and I was happy with what I had created.
In another article I will discuss in more detail how the skill and character progression system was built, and why.
