>>5882999>>5883001Examining this proposed dice ordeal-memory system I just made up in the context of dramatic suspense, uncertainty and player understanding of agency etc the framework of that old gamasutra game design article,
>>5882673here is what I am trying to do: nearly all rpg games set a success probability / difficulty threshold / uncertainty as a sort of exogenous parameter, it is just dictated by the DM or determined from referencing the rulebook etc.
But often this feels unfair to the player, maybe at a certain fictional point they really want to succeed but the DM sets them an unreasonable difficulty / poor probability of success
So what I am proposing with a system where players can store and convert failed dice roll results for later use as favourable results is a means essentially for players to control or override that exogenously determined uncertainty, at critical points of fictional danger they can overturn it with the ordeal-memory of a previously failed roll or bad consequence they endured. This is actually a means for them to slightly usurp the DM responsibility of setting probabilities / difficulty thresholds the uncertainty etc. They can force an easier roll but there will still be some uncertainty (assuming the players a converting and keeping / hoarding >90 roll under type probabilities)
What sort of stories could this generate? Perhaps it could lead to some farcical situations, eg player hero first attempts some casual fishing task, the probability is roll under 50, to spear a fish they fail with a roll of 96 so the player decides to bank this failed result, accept the bad consequence and return home forlorn and famished. Upon their return back their starving village is attacked by barbarian marauders led by a sorceror riding a monstrous fire-breathing dragon! (It's this gentleman again,
>>5880337>>5880515yay) So the player decides to just invoke their banked 96 earlier failure result, and easily defeat the dragon with their fishing spear just a casual thrust rolling effortlessly under 96. hmmm so maybe there needs to be some more detail to regulate the magnitudes lol the fictional deployment or comparative situational context lol. Maybe you can only exploit the saved super easy probability threshold if you can fictionally justify how the earlier ordeal memory helped, there needs to be some DM player negotiation hmmm hmmm
