Creating a new Blackoath game engine

Hello, everyone! Today I thought I'd share some stuff I've been working on for the last couple of days. But before I do, let me explain why I decided it was time for me to attempt the creation of a new standard core mechanic for Blackoath games.

Many of you know that I'm not really a fan of D20 systems. They can be twisted into something that I enjoy, but the root, D&D-inspired system isn't something I enjoy. It tends to be attribute-first, with skills being added often as an afterthought. And yes, I've worked on skill-only D20 rulesets, and there are some extremely cool D20 games out there, both close to D&D (like Outcast Silver Raiders), or completely removed from it, but still using it as their skeleton (such as Advanced Fantasy). Yes, you can use a D20 ruleset and have an awesome game. But inherently, it's annoying to use them as a solo player. The fact that they rely on a Target Number immediately starts introducing issues. Issues that I've been trying to solve for a while now.

I'm not going to go through all my attempts at writing a TN system that will grow with the PCs, but suffice to say, balancing and scaling is something really, really important to me. I like my games to be potentially infinite, which means that the world (enemies, threats) must grow in power with the PCs. And this is why I wrote the Dynamic Target Number table for Machine Gods. I knew a lot of people would hate it because it essentially makes Attribute modifiers useless, and makes character specialization complicated. My reasoning for writing it this way, though, was that Machine Gods is a rules light game, one that I didn't expect people would play for long since, well, it's light in content. It's barely a hundred pages long, which is nothing for me (I wrote it in a month). So since I considered it mostly a one-shot game, why would character progression matter that much? Well, I guess I was wrong because, oh boy, did some of you really hate it, with a passion. I added the standard Target Number table from D&D that we all know and love, the one that is balanced around a +3 modifier and if you don't have +3, well good luck, and if you have +6 you're going to steamroll it all. Yeah, that one. As you can see, I don't like it, it's not balanced. Why, you ask? Because it's written with the assumption of the game being played with a GM, who will adjust things as they need. But us solo players? We don't have a GM. Sure, we can decide ourselves what the TN is, but I, to put it mildly, hate having to play as the GM when I'm playing solo. The game engine should handle all the mechanics, and not rely on my maybe-fair-but-probably-biased judgement as the player.

Fast forward to last month, when I started working on Choir of Flesh. This game uses Machine Gods as its skeleton, and as such, it uses the dreaded Dynamic Target Number. So even though the game has rules I wrote for Machine God's upcoming Advanced Rules book that, in my humble opinion, solve the "issues" the Dynamic Target Number system has (namely the new Mastery and Burden modifiers), a few people still hated it with a passion and basically consider the game to be broken, since the whole thing is written with DTN as its core mechanic (even though yes, I added the static, traditional TN table once again just in case someone wants it).

This is all very exasperating and frustrating as a designer, but I completely understand why it happens. People see "D20 ruleset!" and immediately make a bunch of assumptions. Which yeah, that is the main reason I work with D20 rulesets, because they are familiar. The problem is that once you start introducing changes to the formula, you start experiencing pushback, because you are no longer offering the same gameplay style that they expect from a D20 ruleset. And yes, when you've been indoctrinated to think of Attribute (or Ability, whatever you want to call them) modifiers as the single most important thing in the game, and then you see a game that just uses them to set the TN and nothing else, well, you're going to say "WTF is this crap".

So all this is to say: known systems come with their baggage, especially one as known as D20. And I'm honestly tired of having to justify my decisions all the time, which is something that simply doesn't happen when I work on games with original mechanics (such as Salvage & Sorcery; not a single person came and said "why is this X way and not Y way?"). So the solution? To just use my own ruleset from now on, the same thing that Modiphius or Free League do. They have one ruleset that they just adapt to the same setting. This isn't something I generally like to do because I think that mechanics must serve the setting, and adapting existing ones to a setting can be problematic (like all the 5e games have shown us time and again). BUT! If I write a vague enough core mechanic, one that just works regardless of the setting, and then I build other systems on top of that, I think it can work.

So this is exactly what I've been doing these last couple of days. I've written four different systems. But I think I'm going to stick to the one that lives rent-free in my heart and mind: a D100 system. Why, you ask?

• Everyone understands how percentiles work. Everyone. This makes it extremely easy to learn and teach.

• There are no Target Numbers. That alone is is reason enough to love it.

• They tend to work well with skill-only games, which is my preferred type of game.

As you know, I have quite a few D100 games, so the base formula is the same: roll D100, if it's less than or equal to your Skill, you succeed. I did want to introduce a couple of new elements to give more player agency, though. The main one is the introduction of a Momentum Pool. PCs have X Momentum points that they can spend when making a check. MP can be spent in two ways:

• 1. Assure (Pre-Roll): Spend 1 MP before you roll to add a +20 bonus to your Skill for that single check. This is the safe, controlled way to improve your odds.

• 2. Push (Post-Failure): If you fail a check, you can choose to spend 1 MP to Push the Roll. When you Push, you immediately re-roll the D100.

  • If the Pushed Roll Succeeds: You achieve your goal, but your success introduces a Complication.

  • If the Pushed Roll Fails: You still fail, and this time it's a Major Complication.

Simple, right? There would be a couple of complication tables, so you as a player just look up what happens, instead of having to think about it, of course. I'm calling this the Momentum Engine, at least for now. There's more to it, of course, but this is the core skeleton of the idea.

The Arcana Engine

As I said, I've been working on this for two days now, and I've come up with four different ideas. The other two aren't that great so I'll not share them with you, but this one has potential as well. This one uses 2D10 as its dice resolution mechanic, so let's take a look at it:

1. Skills: Skills are rated from 1 to 10.

• Novice: 1-3

• Competent: 4-6

• Expert: 7-8

• Master: 9-10

2. The Core Mechanic: Roll 2D10 of different colors. One is the Focus Die, and the other is the Fortune Die. If either the Focus die OR the Fortune die shows a number equal to or less than your Skill, you succeed. If both dice show a number greater than your Skill, you fail. This is were things get interesting, though: the die that caused the success tells you how it happened.

• Success on the FOCUS die: A success earned through skill, technique, and control. It was deliberate and precise.

• Success on the FORTUNE die: A success granted by luck, circumstance, or overwhelming force. The environment or fate conspired to help you.

I think it sounds interesting, right? I'm not totally sold on some details, and I have more stuff written for it, but this is the core idea. Still, I'm not sure I like it enough to want to write a game (or several games, rather) with it. I might try to blend this with the Momentum Engine idea above.

Well, this is a really long post already, so if you've read it all, thank you! What do you think, is the idea of a single engine for all my future games (and maybe even releasing existing ones with it) an appealing one?