This post is part of a series that tackles the reading review of a yet unpublished RPG called Silvervine. Please note that this game is still in development, my review is part of the pre-playtest feedback.
Last time I tackled Basic Mechanics, now it’s time for the 2nd (of 3) posts on the game’s Crunchy bits: Detailed & Specific Subsystems.
While Chapter 3 covered the game’s basic challenge mechanic Chapter 4 of the Silvervine rulesbook covers the subsystems needed to handle:
- Initiative and time
- Movement (Ground, Water, air)
- Vehicles
- Perception and Senses
- Size and Scale
- Healing materials, poison and chemicals.
Time, Actions and Initiative
Time outside of combat/action is measured in the standard seconds, minutes and hours. The author allows himself a little fun defining those (especially the seconds, you’re such a geek John). I believe it is unnecessary given that there’s a good chance that the humans that play that game are already familiar with the system. 🙂
Time in combat or during time sensitive action scenes is divided in the near standard 6 second round (As seen in D&D and which GURPS should have adopted in its 4th edition IM not so HO).
In that round, a player has the choice to
- Full Move + Simple Action(Take out a weapon, shout a command)
- 1/2 Move + Complex Action (Attack)
- A single full concentration/Complex Action (Casting A Spell, Unlock a door)
- 2 simple Actions
- 1 Simple and 1 complex action
This is pretty standard fare in current games… but I found it odd that speaking is an actual action in a Story-telling game. After having lived 7 years of speaking as a free action in the d20 world, I’d be vexed to have to spend actions just to communicate tactical details to allies.
Initiative is determined by playing a d10 plus the character’s derived Initiative modifier. The rules mention that each PC/NPC roll initiative, I’d add something for large number of mooks….
This is especially important as initiative needs to be rolled each round! I must point out that this isn’t spelled out in the rules but rather in the example of play. In terms of current game designs such as d20, Gurps and BESM, it needlessly increases dice rolls for no significant advantage. I’d go with static initiatives.
Finally, there’s a section on surprises, which is basically a free round of action, but the game doesn’t really go into detail how surprise is achieved (I assume it’s a failed perception roll or as required by dramatic narrative).
Conclusion: A pretty standard system with a few kinks to work out.
Movement
Up to this point, I still don’t know if combat is tactical (with minis and maps) or narrative-relative. I sneaked a peek at the combat chapter, and nowhere is there a reference to relative distances and tactical movement, so narrative it is (I’ll touch this in the next post).
While movement is vague, the rules go in quite a lot of detail to establish the precise number of feet a character can move in a round, including rules for sprinting (both for speed and duration) that require rolls and calculations like divisions for every rounds.
Add to this a complex flight subsystem with a full page of well-described maneuvers, another simpler system for swimming (where you need to divide 45 by 8!!!) and a rather clever and straightforward one for jumping.
All this makes me think that Silvervine suffers from a bit of rules schizophrenia in that it tries to do things simply with its core mechanics but some subsystems are quite heavier, hard to learn and don’t seem to have the supporting crunch in the combat section to validate their existance.
In order to address that. I’d propose to make all these subsystems as variant, optional rules and possibly add more tactical movement options in combat (like relative range) to warrant the details created for movement.
In parallel, in the basic game, I’d abstract, movement by giving each race/vehicle a Speed modifiers and have all speed related challenges be resolved with the basic mechanics (like a Reflex+Perception challenges in a chase scene).
Conclusion: Overly complex movement rules that either need simplification or stronger support from Combat rules. Clever jumping rules that allow anime-like jumps. Also of note a very relevant table of various flying creatures and machines with comparative movement stats.
Vehicles:
Vehicles are represented by a number of variable statistics (Mobility, Propulsion, Engine Power, Design) that affects it’s performance (in formulas) and a series of others (Hit Points, Cruising speeds, Load, fuel capacity).
Having read and used Gurps Vehicle, this is not uncharted territory. However, while the rules indicate that this system allows for would be engineer-type players to build their own vehicle, the system lacks clear vehicle design rules (or reference to them elsewhere in the book). There also doesn’t seem to be any indication of an Experience cost (what you use to build PCs) or monetary costs for a vehicle… You know to prevent a character to make himself a rocket launcher equipped Hummer for free… 🙂
Conclusion: Once again, cool idea, but not seen in enough details to be usable by GMs or players in my opinion. This could the starting point for extra material for an accessory or a web enhancement.
BESM tackles this by making basic vehicles (motorcycles, Jeeps) as minor equipment you buy with character points and major ones (mecha, spaceships) as “allies” you buy and made out of the game’s chargen rules.
If simplicity is the goal, it might be worth checking it for guidance, if completness is, I’d suggest d20 modern or Gurps Vehicles.
Perception and Senses:
This is actually a nice page that describes common impairment to visual senses and how they would increase the difficulty factor of a roll made with the game’s basic mechanics. There’s also a paragraph on how far you can see that’s a bit on the complex side (you need to derive the distance from your abilities) but it’s workable when distinguishing a far away detail comes up.
I’d suggest expanding the impairment table to include the sense of hearing and even magical/electronic (if applicable in the game) to be more complete.
Conclusion: The perception impairment subsystem is a fine example of a subsystem that ties in well with the basic mechanic.
Size and Scale
This is the bane of so many games. Gurps failed at it, D&D does too to a certain extend (High Str makes giants expert at hitting you).
Silvervine remains simple in that it suggest that challenges where scale differences would matter, like a giant trying to manipulate a stylus, is adjudicated by an increase in difficulty (when size works against the situation) or bonus dice (if size works in favour of the situation).
But then again, why an increase in difficulty on the one hand and an increase of dice on the other? A certain internal logic needs to be respected in my opinion and would either need to be explained a bit more or the adjudication should only be focused on difficulty (making a task easier or harder by changing the number of successes).
Conclusion: Simple approach that should be based on the same mechanics to be consistent.
Healing material and poison:
Potions, Healing Herbs and poison are all treated equally rules-wise. Ingesting them heals (or inflicts) a certain number of dice of damage based on the material’s potency. Simple.
What isn’t so simple is that these rule also seem to cover all kinds of chemical or magical compounds that can affect the body (I’d assume things like drugs, alchool and cures for cancer… I’d consider renaming that section accordingly). So for those a set of other variables like Resistance per dose, % of effect and Onset time come into play.
A compound with a resistance rating allows a, quite logically, a resistance roll… but instead of requiring a number of successes, the difficulty rating of the resistance roll is variable (i.e. it’s different than rolling an 8 on a d10) which goes against the basic mechanic of the game.
I’d think about changing this to number of successes to maintain the ‘difficulty is always 8’ rule the designers adopted since I started this.
Percentage of effect is to simulate a compound that isin’t 100% sure of having an effect, like a cure for a disease. In those cases you roll a flat % and see if it works…
Once again, this doesn’t mesh with the basic mechanic and becomes an unrelated sub system. I’d combine effect and resistance in the same mechanic by having them increase or decrease the number of successes a character needs to roll to prevent the effect (or allow it if it’s a beneficial substance that has a chance of failure).
All these rules are based on the assumption that healing material and poisons are not subjected to Resistance or % effect (I’d allow resistance to poison personaly).
Conclusion: Having a unified system for healing/poison and all other chemicals/alchemicals/magical substances is clever and neat but the subsystem needs to mesh with the game’s basic mechanics.
Overall conclusion
Chapter 4 builds up on the basic mechanics of chapter 3 and announces that the specific subsystems are designed to mesh with the basic ones but should be presented as variants or optional.
I think that the level of detail for movement is overkill without the support to make it worthwhile in combat. All these systems have their place in the game but must be revised to be as elegant and coherent as the basic mechanic they build on.
Vehicles and flight should be packaged in a different product or be available in lite and complex versions.
Thanks for reading.
Graham|ve4grm says
re: actions
I believe that there must be a simpler way of saying this.
For instance:
Each round, a character gets one simple action and one complex action, or a single full concentration/complex action (whatever that happens to be). (A simple action may be performed in place of a complex action.)
After that, just define a full move as a complex action, and a half move as a simple action. Same result, less options to remember.
Well, it makes more sense to me, at least.
ChattyDM says
I’m in total agreement there Graham.
Graham|ve4grm says
Yeah. Not a dig at the Silvervine folks, but people in general need to learn how to write fewer and clearer sentences.
Tommi says
Here I am wondering how extensive subsystems help in establishing theme, narrative, or cinematics.
My gut reaction is that they are useless dead weight. There are ways of making heavy, simulate-the-physics style rules that do help in achieving the aforementioned design goals. I’m just not convinced that these ones do anything of the kind.
Ripper X says
Movement? I’ve never used this, nor have I ever played a game where we did. Well, except for in long journeys, but then it’s always just estimated.
But I didn’t post to talk about movement, it’s this 6 second round. What?!?! That’s not enough time for everybody to attack! I have always played rounds as roughly 1 minute, and 1 turn is roughly 10 minutes (which is really only relied upon for magic)
I understand that combat in RPGs will never be realistic, and while I don’t use movement rates during combat rounds, I do use speed factors. Logically speaking, I character using a musket that is loaded and ready to go is going to attack before a character lugging around a giant broadsword that PC’s seem to love so much because of the hefty attack damage that it inflicts.
6 seconds? That just doesn’t seem to be enough time for anybody to do anything, logically speaking. A bear probably has enough time to chew on your face for a bit, but by god, the people who are saving me from this mauling had better spend a bit longer then 6 seconds to pick their shots!
It is interesting to see how others handle combat though.
ChattyDM says
Well Ripper here’s the thing:
D&D 3e and d20 games: 1 round = 6 seconds
BESM: About 10 seconds iirc
GURPS : 1 second (!!!, An action is 1 step and readying your axe, next turn is 1 step and striking with the axe, rince and repeat)
So a 6 second round has been done.
It goes with systems that want to simulate a 1 roll = 1 hit combat system.
A D&D 1ed was 1 minute per round and it was implied that rolling a d20 represented one full minute of sparing with your opponents…
Either way works if they are explained accordingly. I,m not too concerned with realism in a RPG but more in plausible suspension of disbelief and sheer coolness.
Graham|ve4grm says
RipperX
Actually, if you’re in an actual combative situation, and you’re spending more than 6 seconds to choose and execute a single hit (once you’re in position at least), you’re taking too long. This is especially true in melee.
While there may be a long period of waiting and preparing before a police shootout, for instance, once things have started a single second can mean survival or death.
From my experience with martial arts and sparring, 5-10 seconds is actually about right between each attack for a novice. The more experienced may actually be faster. Again, however, there may be intervals of 10-20 seconds spent just watching your opponent, but 1 minute is just way, way too long to be realistic.
That said, if you’re looking at hunting for an estimate, than 1 minute is too short, as you spend hours setting up, and maybe minutes aiming and readying.
But never confuse hunting something that doesn’t see you and is not actively fighting back with actual combat. They are very, very different, and especially so for timing.
Ed/Ronsha says
Hello.
To all of you who have never met me, my name is Ed Pantaleano, a developer for Silvervine Games. Thanks to all of you for your time and effort in breaking down our systems. It has been a great help.
Reading through your posts and comments, I wanted to chime in on a couple of things:
1. “re: actions
I believe that there must be a simpler way of saying this.”
We are working right now with each chapter, one by one, to rewrite grammar. We apologize in advance for some of the language, which in some cases is many versions old at this point.
2. “Chapter 4 builds up on the basic mechanics of chapter 3 and announces that the specific subsystems are designed to mesh with the basic ones but should be presented as variants or optional.”
You hit the nail on the head with this one. We’ve always intended for detailed rules systems to be modular in design so that a GM had the ability to use a rules set as it fit their game. I’ll talk to John about making that clearer in the book. The idea is that we want a rules set out there for these things if a GM needs them and doesn’t want to figure out his own way of rolling for it (or when he’s bitten off more than he can chew). Silvervine was designed to be a universal system for any universe, and is being developed as such.
Given the project I’ve just been asked to start by John, he’s taken this post to heart as just he has the previous ones. Most of these systems were designed seperately, and at different points during the development process. As a result, we’ll be tweaking to fit with the Core Mechanic and to have consistency in style.
Thanks again to all of you.
ChattyDM says
Well I’m glad this ‘little’ exercise helps Ed, I appreciate you dropping by!
ChattyDM says
Oh and by the way, I now got that #R stands for number of successes so my gripe about scale was unjustified as it does tie in with the basic mechanics. Thanks to John for pointing this out.
I’ll be working with a more recent draft from now on… 🙂