『Greg Gorden: Designing Games Beyond the d20』のカバーアート

Greg Gorden: Designing Games Beyond the d20

Greg Gorden: Designing Games Beyond the d20

無料で聴く

ポッドキャストの詳細を見る
Greg Gorden: Designer ExtraordinaireWay back in September of 2019, I had the honor of interviewing award winning game designer Greg Gorden in Episode 164 of Geekerati Radio. Greg was on the design teams for DC Heroes, James Bond 007, Torg, and many other games. Given the amount of time I’ve spent playing games he designed, or worked on, I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that he is my favorite game designer. In the episode, we discussed a number of the game systems he's worked on in the past and some of the mechanical innovations he's come up with. Two of his major contributions discussed in the episode were "Exploding Die Rolls" and the development of Fate Chip mechanics in Deadlands, a mechanic that has evolved into the Bennies system in Savage Worlds. He was also on the design team that pushed for the incorporation of Die-Step game mechanics into role playing games.The mechanics that Gorden developed have had a wide reaching impact in game design across the table top role playing game hobby and are worth discussing in some detail. As interesting and wide reaching as the influence of the exploding dice mechanic of DC Heroes has been, that is an innovation that's been around since the first edition of Ken St. Andre's masterpiece Tunnels & Trolls and I’ll touch on that particular mechanic in a future post honoring the very underappreciated design work of Ken St. Andre. His design influences are huge (and include the Fallout series of games), but he is not as well known as he should be in part because people didn’t often cite his influence on their designs. This newsletter post will focus on the second innovation, die-step game mechanics, and why they are one of the best mechanical foundations for any role playing game.The Most Common Role Playing Game MechanicsThere are several common base mechanics for arbitrating the success or failures of character actions in modern role playing games. Some of the most frequently used are Difficulty Number/Target Number (or what Classic Traveller called a "Basic Throw"), Percentage Chance (as exemplified in Runequest), Success Threshold (which can use narrative dice like Genesys or die pools like Vampire) or a "you, me, or we" Shared Decision Mechanic like Apocalypse World, Inspectres, and many other indie role playing games.Many of these systems use a "Fixed Die" mechanic as a part of their resolution. For example, all rolls in D&D's Difficulty Number system are resolved using a twenty-sided die, Traveller and Apocalypse World use a roll of two six-sided dice, Vampire uses a pool of ten-sided dice, and Runequest uses percentile dice. The die type doesn't change to reflect the skill of the character or the challenges faced by the character in a fixed die system, only the modifier applied to the roll or the number of dice rolled changes.Die-Step games take a different approach. Instead of using a single die type for the determination of success or failure of an action, they use various die types that move up or down to reflect the skill/natural talent of the character. For example, a character's Strength might be reflected as a die value ranging from d4 to d12 with a character of d4 Strength being weak and a character with a d12 Strength being very strong.According to Rick Priestley (a major figure in the history of the wargaming hobby), in his book Tabletop Wargames, one of the first wargames to use a Die-Step system was StarGrunt by Jon M. Tuffley. StarGrunt was first published in 1990 by Ground Zero Games and it’s second edition is available in pdf for free at the link above. StarGrunt is a science fiction miniatures skirmish game that is inspired by fiction like Gordon Dickson’s Dorsai, David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers, the Alien films, and role playing games like 2300 AD. The rules are relatively easy to learn and one of the reasons this is the case is the fact that Tuffley decided to represent the effectiveness of individual troopers with something he called a “Basic Die.” In StarGrunt, each given trooper is rated as either Green, Regular, or Veteran. The rating of each individual trooper is determined at the beginning of play with Green troopers using a d6, Regulars using a d8, and Veterans using a d10 to determine how successful they are at a given task. StarGrunt uses a Target Number system, but does use a Step-Die modifier mechanic called “Basic Die Plus and Basic Die Minus” where the dice used by the troop levels is moved up or down one die type (from d6 to d4 or from d10 to d12) under some circumstances and modified by a additive/subtractive number in other cases (+1 or -1 to the roll).The first role playing game I can think of that used a Die-Step system is FASA’s Earthdawn First Edition published in 1993, with game mechanics designed by Greg Gorden and others. As stated in the Geekerati interview, Gorden was inspired to use a Die-Step system when his boss asked him to design a Fantasy role playing game that had its ...
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
まだレビューはありません