THE LAND OF MUTANTOR!!!

[click to enlarge]

WEIRDGRIM STONEPUNK.

Still working out just what that means, but yeah, this is where it goes down.

MUTANTOR V

MUTANTOR! Color Art

My muse is funny. 

She harshes out on projects all the time, puts them into cold storage for aaaaaages 

then suddenly BAM MUZE SEZ DO NOW JEZ.

So these three pieces turned up for MUTANTOR! over the last 24 hours. Go figure.

Guess I better start writing up MUTANTOR! again.

MUTANTOR!!!! : Design ideas

Some design ideas for MUTANTOR!!!....

--- Make everything in the game unstable and under constant threat of mutation. The right combination of random will occasionally bestow characters with the ability to change the world around them. Not just the characters' freaky powerz, not the abominations that roam the land, or the twisting land itself, but the fabric of reality, and of the game. When that opportunity comes, the player chooses how much of their character they're willing to risk and sacrifice in order to change what they want. No idea if this would suck or be awesome.

--- Where possible get the players to do the rolling. I do like this idea. I know it's nothing new, but I'm intrigued by it. Less work for the GM is always good in my book.

--- With the "players make all rolls" thing in mind, instead of making constant calculations for each roll, simply rate each situation to see if the character is at an advantage, a disadvantage, or it could go either way (need catchy terms there). Then take that idea and using the roll 3 dice and pick one mechanic that I've been working on,:

If the character has a clear advantage, roll 3 six sided dice and pick the highest.
If the character has a clear disadvantage, roll 3 six sided dice and pick the lowest.
If the character is roughly matched, roll 3 six sided dice and pick the middle.

It makes it really easy for the GM to make a snap call on the difficulty. Where it may encounter issues in the lack of bredth. A good swordsman against a peasant has the same chance of finishing them off as the greatest duelist in the world. In a rules lite game that... could work. In something more detailed, not so sure.

It'd be pretty easy to add a greater disadvantage: roll 3 six sided dice, and you only score if you roll a double or triple. And maybe if you're a a great advantage you could choose one of the 3 dice rolled and reroll it and hope for a better result.

--- The Arena. Going way out here, but say MUTANTOR!!! enters the world as a box set... it would be cool to have inside say the lid of the box is where all the dicerolling gets done. If it ISN'T player rolls everything, but player vs GM rolls, then the aggressor would roll first and the defender rolls second, with the option of hitting the aggressor's dice if they're scored a good roll. And with say the Greater Advantage idea above, instead of rerolling one of those dice, instead they get to add a fourth dice to their roll and can try and hit either any of their own duds, or try to hit their opponent's dice to alter their result. There's something really combative and bastardly about this idea... could be a lot of fun....

.... unless you were playing this online. There would have to be an alternate option for non-physical rolls (well non-shared physical space).

---- OH GODS. an RPG popup book. that would fuck online piracy....

MUTANTOR!!! wtf?

Some setting notes about my slowly gestating game from a chat on G+ about stonepunk:

MUTANTOR!!!! is weirdgrim stonepunk. 'Punk' is a rejection of social norms: in a neolithic society that means rejecting the tribe and going your own way. Only it's a dangerous world: you wanna eat well, you gotta hunt as a pack. so these outcasts and exiles need to find other outcasts and exiles they can work together with but still maintain their own self-determination. That's the setup for the PCs, ostracised punks who have to get along just to survive: adventure follows. Each tribe they're from has its own cultural mores, so they're all rejecting something different. If it ever sees the light of day, during character creation you create the tribe you've left behind:

Zak's Barbaric Tribe Generator was my Secret Santicore request for a reason.

Stonepunk is also riffing on its steampunk predecessor. With steampunk you've got technological innovation and wild possibilities... with stonepunk you've got the same thing, just with a different technology. so the world of MUTANTOR!!! is on the cusp of technological evolution, and it requires people who aren't prepared to do things the way the ancestors did things for thousands of generations. It requires people who see things differently... punks who'll experiment and fuck things up and try the new cause they're all about rejecting the old. The PCs, once again. Only it's not just the jump from hand axes to bows and primitive blades, it's stonepunk, so it's about stonebased technology - henges, stone circles, ziggurats and pyramids... architecture as a machinery - and seeing what it can power, as much as smaller ideas - stonepunk weaponry and what rockart can bring into existence.

So take that, make everything a mutant, make the land a living entity infected by cancerous dungeon infestations, make it gritty and bloody and horrible and set it at the south pole with days and nights that last a year and everyone fears the Warriors from the Meat Moon.... well that's MUTANTOR.


more stuff about the game here

MUTANT DICE ENGINE: Further Ideas

So while I've been ridiculously busy with illustrations my thinkmeat has been busy thinking about what to do once this project out of the way. And one of those thinks has been developing the Mutant Dice Engine I came up with a while back.

Have a read of the way it works in that link above; the new idea I've been exploring is different ways of reading the 3d6 roll. Currently it's 3d6, drop highest and lowest, keep the middle, unless you roll doubles or triples, which you add together. Doubles 1's are bad, triple 1's are worse. What happens if you keep the lowest roll, or the highest? Why would you?

Well the why is pretty straight forward, it's a measure of ability, now in three stages. If you're crap, keep the lowest dice; if you're good, keep the middle dice, if you're awesome, keep the highest.

What that does to the results is shown below:

And when you group them together in bands of results (which I was looking at doing in that post linked above) you get this:

Basically no great surprises. If you're crap it shows. If you're good it shows.

What is probably the biggest issue is that no matter what you're rolling you always have the same chance of rolling doubles and getting an extraordinarily high result. Looking at the top table, doesn't matter if you're keeping low, mid or high, you're going to be scoring a result higher than six 22.7% of the time; every fifth roll; you'll roll twelve or more 8.3% of the time, every twelfth roll.

From a simulation point of view this is problematic. The rookie has the same chance of succeeding at a very difficult task as the seasoned pro (though he's likely to stuff it up and result of zero to two 53.7% of the time). Doesn't strike me as very realistic.

From a gameplay point of view it's actually looking pretty fun. Even if you're totally crap, you have as good a chance at the unlikely shot as the awesome guy, and I can see that encouraging players to try things even though they might be crap.

My question is this... would you prefer something more realistic — say by not allowing "keeping the lowest" rolls to add doubles or triples together, which adds exceptions to the standard way of reading the rolls, something I'd rather avoid — or something that is unrealistic but encourages having a go?

MUTANTOR! DICE ENGINE

Here's the final version of the dice engine I'm gonna go with for MUTANTOR! Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts on this. I've tried to strip it down to as simple an explanation as possible. Lemme know what you think. Plus, logo!

ROLL THREE 6-SIDED DICE:

• If each dice is different:

PURE! Drop the highest and lowest dice; the remaining dice is your score.

• If two of the dice are the same:

FREAK! Add those two same dice together. That’s your score.

• If all three dice are the same:

MUTANT! Add those three dice together. That’s your score, plus your dice will start to MUTATE!

• Ones are Bad:

Double ones? HORROR! Don’t add them together, instead your score is 1, plus bad stuff happens.

Triple ones? ABOMINATION! Don’t add them together, instead your score is 0, plus real bad stuff happens.


MUTATING DICE:

Whenever you roll a MUTANT your dice start to MUTATE. That number you rolled three times? Any time you roll that number again you can change it to be any number you want – between 1 and 6 of course.

So when you roll three 6-sided dice that are MUTATING:

• If each dice is different and one is a MUTANT DICE:

You can change your MUTANT DICE to be the same as one of the other two dice; add those two same dice together. FREAK! That’s your score.

• If two of the dice are the same, and one or two is a MUTANT DICE:

You can change your MUTANT DICE to make all three dice the same; add those three dice together. MUTANT! That’s your score.

• If all three dice are MUTANT DICE:

MUTANTOR!!! You can change all your MUTANT DICE to be whatever you want them to be and other super awesome stuff happens.

MUTANTOR! Graphic Imagery (or Mutant Dice Part II)

OK, this is going to be the driest post I think I'll ever do, but it's a necessary eeeevil. Actually, no, it's not, it's real important that I get this right. Cause the one thing you do over and over again in RPGs is roll dice. It's gotta work right, it's gotta be fun, it's gotta have longevity and ease of play, it's gotta serve the setting well. So yeah. Important. And I'll be super grateful if you slog through this and let me know what you think. I'll buy you a beer for your thoughts.

So based on the ideas and comments from the first post about MUTANTOR's dice mechanic and extra input here (thanks everyone who commented) I've worked out 4 possible ways this system could work.

To recap the basic idea:

Roll three d6 dice, scratch the highest and lowest roll take the middle dice as your result.  Equal or beat the difficulty to succeed.

The variations come from what happens when you roll doubles (two faces the same) or triples (three faces the same).

There are four options I've chosen  to do this. And depending on which one I choose there's a pretty broad variety of results available. Here's a comparison, showing the number of times a result occurs using the different methods:

 

A comparison of the various readings of the MUTANTOR dice engine. 

 

Note that for Options 2, 3 and 4, rolling double ones gives a result of 1, and triple ones gives a result of -1.

Option #1:

Option #1: Middle of 3d6 Baseline : Eliminate the highest and lowest die.

Number of times each face occurs out of 216 possible results. 

So this first method is included more as a baseline for the other methods; rolling doubles or triples has no mechanical benefit, though they could still have bonuses elsewhere (every time you roll them you could gain special points elsewhere for example). I don't see this option as particularly exciting or noteworthy. More just for comparison.

 

Option #2:

Option #2: Middle of 3d6, Doubles +1, Triples +2 : Eliminate the highest and lowest die, add one to result if two faces, the same, add two to result if all three faces the same except snake eyes equals 1, and triple 1 equals -1. Number of times each result occurs out of 216 possible results. 

So in this option, rolling doubles means you add 1 to the doubled face to get the result, and rolling triples means you add 2 to the tripled face to get the result. The results spread out a little from the baseline of Option #1; 66% of your results will be a 3, 4, or 5 which is pretty good for setting reasonable expectations on what you'll get when you roll, with the average most likely to be 4.

 

Option #3:

Option #3: Middle of 3d6, Doubles +2, Triples +3: Eliminate the highest and lowest die, add two to result if two faces are the same, add three to result if all three faces the same, except snake eyes equals 1, and triple 1 equals -1. Number of times each result occurs out of 216 possible results. 

This is pretty similar to Option #2, but based on Zak's suggestion to make the doubles +2 and triples +3 for ease of remembering. It blows the results out a little bit, making higher scores a little easier to get, though the predictability is a little less: results of 3, 4, or 5 occur 58% of the time now.

 

Option #4:

Eliminate the highest and lowest die, double the result if two faces are the same, triple the result if all three faces the same, except snake eyes equals 1, and triple 1 equals -1. Number of times each result occurs out of 216 possible results. 

I actually think this is the easiest variant to remember: roll doubles, double the result, roll triples, triple the result. It also produces the most unusual spread of results too. A little weird and lopsided, but not unusable either. It's the least predictable: only 51% of results will be 3, 4, or 5. So every second roll will produce something a little higher, possibly going as high as 18 (but having one 1 in 216 chance of occuring). It also has a few idiosincracities: you can never roll a 7 or 11 for example, and a 6 only seven times, but an 8 or a 10 fifteen times a piece. 

So if you're looking at results as single numbers I don't think Option#4 is really workable.... BUT if you look at the results in bands, suddenly it's not so bad. If you group the results like this: 0-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-11, 12-14, 15-17, 18+, your chances look something like this:

This is very similar to the system used in D6 Star Wars: if you need a result from 3-5 to succeed a Very Easy task, 6-10 for Easy, 11-15 for Medium, 16-20 for Difficult, etc. So with this Option you'd be looking at:

0-2 Very Easy (success roughly 99% of the time... why bother)

3-5 Easy (success roughly 82% of the time)

6-8 Medium (success roughly 27% of the time)

9-11 Difficult (success roughly 16% of the time)

12+ Very Difficult (success roughly 9% of the time)

None of these Options includes what happens when your dice mutate, as discussed in the previous post; it's just easier to reach higher results when they do.

I think Option #4 is my preference; what do you think?

MUTANTOR! Mutant Dice

I'm starting work on MUTANTOR! and one of the things I want to nail is a dice engine mechanic that reflects the setting. So yeah— MUTANTOR! is obviously gonna be crawling with mutant freaks, and the game mechanic should be something like that too.

I'm torn here; there's a strong temptation to make MUTANTOR! another OSR permutation, and stick with the d20 for combat and skill resolution. But if I go my own way here's what I'm thinking of doing.

The MUTANTOR! mechanic would look something like this:

Roll three d6 dice, scratch the highest and lowest roll take the middle dice as your result.  Equal or beat the difficulty to succeed.

If you roll Doubles (two dice have the same face), add 1 to that face, that's your result.

If you roll Triples (all dice have the same face) add 2 to that face, that's your result. Plus the dice MUTATE!

For the player that rolled the triple, from now on their dice rolls have MUTATED: anytime that face turns up in following dice rolls it gets treated like a wild die or joker and the player gets to choose what that die should be.

Any mutant dice roll can mutate into a MUTANT Double. 

If you roll a natural MUTANT Double it can mutate into MUTANT Triple.

If you roll a natural MUTANT Triple... a MEGA MUTATION or something big and cool and I don't know what yet*.

The MUTANT dice effect lasts until the player uses the dice to form a MUTANT Triple, or they roll a natural MUTANT Triple, or the game session ends.

From what I can tell about the probabilities, it all looks something like this:

chance to roll any particular combination : 1/216 (0.46%)
chance to roll a Double : 90/216 (41.67%)
chance to roll a Triple : 1/36 (2.78%)

once mutated:

chance to roll and mutate into a MUTANT Double : 75/216 (34.72%)
chance to roll and mutate into a MUTANT Triple : 30/216 (13.89%)
chance to roll and mutate into a MEGA MUTATION : 1/216 (0.46%)

*MEGA MUTATION... I'm thinking that the player's dice pool permanently mutates; something like one of their three d6's evolves into a d8. next megamutation the another mutates into a d8 again, til they're rolling three d8s... and then d10s, then d12s, and so on.

So yeah. there you have a it, a straight forwardish dice mechanic that reflects the nature of the game.

I'd really like your thoughts on it, whether it works or has loopholes or can be over exploited or whatever. Cause once the system is locked in then I can get cracking on the rest of MUTANTOR!


Some samples of dice rolls:

Normal rolls: drop the highest and lowest
146 = 4
456 = 5

Doubles: take the double face and add 1
225 = 2+1 = 3
323 = 3+1 = 4    
616 = 6+1 = 7

Triples
333 = 3+1+1 = 5 AND the dice mutate, with any roll of 3 becoming a Mutant roll

Normal Mutant (where for example 3 is the Mutant)

125 = 2 (no mutations)

Mutant Doubles (3 still the Mutant)
315 = double 5 = 5+1 = 6

Mutant Triples (3 again)
344 = triple 4 = 4+1+1 = 6, and the mutant dice effect ends.
336 = triple 6 = 6+1+1 = 8, and the mutant dice effect ends.

MEGAMUTANT (3 is still the Mutant)
333 = wacky mega effect, and the mutant dice effect ends.