Wise Turtle Publishing

I'm thinking of running a play-by-post on a forum, using OVA, but crank down the use of dice. Part of it is to help the flow of things, and part of it is to emphasize the story. I'm a big Game-As-Narrative person, and since the core story is going to remain whether people crit or botch, I don't think that much dice rolling is necessary.

That's not to say there isn't going to be luck involved. Players will be able to make their own choices. I will rolling dice whenever it seems appropriate and to determine degrees of success, but a lengthy combat may only involve 2 or 3 steps to fully resolve. All in all, it'll probably more resemble a Visual Novel than an tabletop game.

Thoughts?

For something like PBP, I think this is a very good idea. A lot of indie games are leaning to "conflict resolution" instead of "task resolution" in their games, so may bode well to check out some of them for ideas.

To approach the idea of combat specifically, I think I'd simplify all successful attacks to knock off half of an opponent's health, thus limiting combat to 4 hits or so each. If a character rolls with a great margin of success, or has a lot of DM bonuses, I'd make it the entire health. Then let the "winner" of the attack narrate that portion of the battle as he sees fit. If he misses, then the defender gets to narrate and roll his own attack.

One interesting alternative to how standard combat plays out "beat each other up until one side loses all of his Health/Endurance" is to make combat an extended ability test. Whichever side rolls the most successes (or reaches a predetermined target number by accumulative rolls) wins. Being at an advantage either gives you a bonus to your dice rolls or automatically gives you a head start in reaching a particular target number. Defensive actions may reduce the cumulative roll achieved by the other side, while tactical actions (disarming, tripping, etc.) prevent the opposition from performing one or more actions, or penalize the use of one or more actions.

Also, there may be multiple ways of achieving victory besides beating the pulp out of the opposition, and each different way of achieving victory may have a different target number that must be met.

My initial idea for handling stuff like this was for players to list their priorities and strategies. It would likely require some coaxing, but preferred examples would be along the lines of "I'll investigate pictures in the exhibit, but if someone approaches me, I'll break it off and talk with them." or "I'm attacking the minions first, and once they drop, I'm blowing my special attack on the leader."

This type of threat assessment should work well in group play, since stratagems would stay fairly simple while being a powerful force on the narrative.